Donald Trump, the former President, plans to commemorate the anniversary of the attack on the United States Capitol Building by a mob of his loyalists. He will continue to make false claims about election fraud in 2020.
Trump announced Tuesday that he’d be holding a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he would discuss the work of the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, as well as give his own interpretation of that day’s events.
Trump’s statement announcing his planned news conference was critical of the select committee, delving into attacks against the commission’s members as well as making false claims about the violent actions of his mob of loyalists at the Capitol.
“Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?” Trump asked.
Trump’s comments are false and misleading. Trump’s continued insistence that the election was fraudulent, in spite of evidence to the contrary, and his invitation to his followers to Washington, D.C. in the weeks leading up to January 6His electoral loss was not as significant as his involvement in the Capitol attack. If Trump had accepted the election results, this attack, unprecedented in U.S. History, would not have occurred at all.
Trump claimed his words recently on January 6 were “extremely calming.” But in reality, he engaged in highly incendiary rhetoric the morning of the Capitol attack, telling his followers that the election was “stolen … by emboldened radical left Democrats” and by “the fake news media.” He also encouraged his loyalists to descend upon the Capitol building to tell Congress, which was in session certifying the election results, how they felt.
“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump spoke to his loyalists.
In a separate part of his statement on Tuesday announcing his January 6 news conference, Trump listed a number of states where he claimed election fraud occurred — claims that were dismissed in dozens of courtrooms where he and his allies tried to have the election results tossed out — while also attacking Republican “RINO” lawmakers, an acronym that means “Republican In Name Only.”
The news conference on January 6, 2022, will “discuss all of these points, and more,” Trump said, adding that, in his eyes, the attack on Congress earlier this year was a simple “unarmed protest.” (Several news agencies have fact-checked that claimWe found that many Trump loyalists were armed with guns and other makeshift weapons.
The statement by the former president, and his malevolent tone toward the January 6 commission, comes as sources close to him say he is becoming increasingly anxious and agitated about the select committee’s work, per reporting from The Guardian. According to sources, Trump has been complaining more about the inquiry these weeks than ever before because Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, shared thousands of documents with it.
He is also reported to be upset that many of his aides, who were subpoenaed by the commission to testify before it, invoke their Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate. According to sources, Trump believes that his aides are making it appear they are complicit in criminal activity by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
There’s a high probability that the commission will be watching when Trump speaks at his news conference next month. Ex-President Trump has a tendency for oversharing his thoughts in public. This is evident in the numerous tweets he sent while in office were frequently cited in federal court cases to help justify rulings made against him or his administration, since his social media commentaries and his government lawyers’ arguments were often at odds with each other.
