The former president described the participants as loving and patriotic, and said Democrats could be blamed for any violence.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday widely praised those who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the insurrection at the Capitol, repeatedly using the word “love” to describe the tone of the event.
Echoing his rhetoric about the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump said, “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”
Speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” on the Fox News Channel, he also said the rally participants were patriots, that some of them were unjustly arrested and jailed, and that a woman who was shot and killed by law enforcement during the insurrection was a great hero.
The remarks reflected recent efforts by Trump and his supporters to cast themselves as the aggrieved parties from the Jan. 6 riot, which left five people dead and others injured — and, for a brief time, halted the wheels of democracy as President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the Electoral College was being confirmed by Congress.
Trump’s reference to “great people” was similar to his remarks after the fatal confrontation in Charlottesville. “You had some very bad people in that group,” he said in August 2017. “But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”
In his interview with Bartiromo, Trump said those at the events of Jan. 6 were loving people who wanted to save the nation.
“The crowd was unbelievable and I mentioned the word ‘love,’ the love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said of his rally on the Ellipse. “That’s why they went to Washington.”
He added: “Too much spirit and faith and love, there was such love at that rally, you had over a million people,” inflating the size of his rally crowd.
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Referring to his remarks to the crowd before they stormed the Capitol as “a very mild-mannered speech,” Trump also suggested that the blame for any violence that day could be placed on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats because they didn’t take the potential for violence seriously.
“They are the ones that were responsible,” he said.
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Speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” on the Fox News Channel, Trump also said the rally participants were patriots and that some of them were unjustly arrested and jailed. https://t.co/1pe3zMjeXM
— POLITICO (@politico) July 11, 2021
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