President Donald Trump defended his remarks made at the Save America Rally, which many have said incited the riots at Capitol Hill.
Here is the full video:
Here are two snippets:
Trump said to the media: “If you read my speech, and many people have done it and I’ve seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television, it’s been analyzed and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate.”
Here is a link to Trump’s speech at the rally.
Trump said (emphasis mine):
We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. If he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one [sic] you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.—We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. We’ve set it on a much straighter course, a much … I thought four more years. I thought it would be easy.
I’ve read articles that only include the first portion of the speech I posted above. They “forgot” about the second part, which explicitly says “peacefully and patriotically.”
Peacefully. Patriotically.
I don’t like Trump’s rhetoric. I don’t like Trump. I think he could have worded the first part a tad better.
But to say he incited the Capitol Hill riots is ridiculous.
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