“It seems cause-and-effect,” Chris Miller said in an interview with VICE on Showtime.
Donald Trump’s acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller blamed the former president’s speech for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection in an interview with VICE.
“Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened,” Miller said in an interview with VICE on Showtime.
Trump spoke to supporters before the deadly riots, offering false election fraud claims and saying they would lose America if they didn’t “fight like hell.” Miller said in the interview that it appears that speech sparked the riot.
“It seems cause-and-effect,” Miller said. “The question is, did he know he was enraging the crowd to do that? I don’t know.”
Miller’s comments are among the sharpest criticism Trump has received from those inside his administration for his actions on Jan. 6. Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate after being charged with inciting the insurrection.
Miller has been criticized for not mobilizing National Guard troops quickly enough during the insurrection. D.C. National Guard chief William Walker testified that it took hours for Miller to approve troop deployment. Military officials were wary of how troop presence could be perceived, Walker said. Robert Salesses, a senior Pentagon official, testified that Miller wanted to take time before deploying the Guard to better understand how they would be deployed.
In a clip of the interview, Miller said he didn’t speak with Trump on Jan. 6.
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Donald Trump’s acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller blamed the former president's speech for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection in an interview with VICE https://t.co/pE2hq1tdVm
— POLITICO (@politico) March 11, 2021
It wasn’t just that speech on January 6. The coup was carefully planned, probably for months. Trump’s tweets and other pronouncements long indicated if he could not win the election legitimately or win the subsequent lawsuits, he was going to take the presidency by force.
Agreed. I believe Trump knew about it and through his allies planned this. He wouldn’t get his hands dirty but Roger Stone would. Guiliani would.
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