July 11, 2021

Fox News Invites Trump on to Whitewash the January 6 Insurrection

There was “love in the air,” the ex-president claims about the day thousands stormed the Capitol.

A Trump supporter invites a police officer into a fist fight during a melee at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.AP Photo/Julio Cortez

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Donald Trump appeared on Fox News on Sunday morning to promote some brazen revisionism of the January 6 insurrection. Calling into Maria Bartiromo’s show, the former president started with his usual fibbing about crowd size—he claimed “over a million people” attended his speech at the White House just before the attack on the Capitol Building (attendees numbered closer to 30,000). Then, he painted a rosy alternate reality of what happened that day, with zero pushback from Bartiromo.

Trump claimed he gave “a very mild-mannered speech” on January 6, which came shortly after Rudy Giuliani warmed up the crowd by urging them to have “trial by combat” over an election that Trump and his allies falsely claimed was stolen through fraud. 

“There was such love at that rally… these were peaceful people,” Trump told Bartiromo, despite that many in the crowd grew belligerent as he too called for battle against a Congress about to certify Joe Biden’s presidential victory, telling his supporters to “show strength” or risk losing their country altogether. 

“The love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump enthused on Fox News on Sunday. 

 

Trump’s call-in segment also included his false claim that January 6 couldn’t have been a violent insurrection because “there were no guns whatsoever.” At least four people have been charged by federal or local law enforcement to date with firearms possession at the Capitol that day, and police confiscated stun guns, bear spray, baseball bats, and flagpoles among other weapons used by insurrectionists.

Meanwhile, many members of Congress—including those in his own party—have boosted spending on personal security, dropping campaign money on round-the-clock protection details and fortifications for their homes, out of fear that the forces behind January 6 continue to be a serious threat.

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