MSNBC abruptly cut away from President Donald Trump on Tuesday as he spoke to reporters for the first time since last week’s riot at the Capitol.
Asked whether he took any responsibility for the chaos, Trump said, “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.”
Trump was not clear whether he was referring to his rally speech before the riots, or the short statement he posted on Twitter made later that evening, which the platform later deleted.
“And if you look at what other people have said, politicians, at a high level, about the riots during the summer — the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle, and various other places — that was a real problem,” Trump added.
MSNBC host Hallie Jackson cut away from the president’s remarks at that point, claiming that he was not telling the truth.
“We are coming out of this now because the president has started to — as he occasionally does, often does — veer away from the truth,” said Jackson. “His video that he taped on Wednesday after the riots were happening at the Capitol was not viewed widely as ‘totally appropriate’ — in fact, many people argued they were highly inappropriate and that he told the people who were rioting, the mob who was descending on the Capitol, that they were ‘very special’ and that he ‘loved them.'”
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Trump also denounced both violence and Big Tech censorship in his comments before boarding Air Force One.
“I think that Big Tech is doing a horrible thing for our county and to our country, and I believe it’s going to be a catastrophic mistake for them,” Trump said, an apparent reference to their recent ban of his account and a purge of many others.
“They’re dividing and divisive and they’re showing something I’ve been predicting for a long time,” he continued. “I’ve been predicting it for a long time and people didn’t act on it. But I think Big Tech has made a terrible mistake, and very, very bad for our country. And that’s leading others to do the same thing. And it causes a lot of problems and a lot of danger.”
House Democrats released Monday a single article of impeachment they will file against Trump for allegedly inciting what they claimed was an “insurrection” at the Capitol, The Daily Wire reported.
Trump “willfully made statements that encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — imminent lawless action at the Capitol,” the article of impeachment alleges. “Incited by President Trump, a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”
At the “Save America Rally” that preceded the riot, Trump told supporters to “peacefully” march to the Capitol and “cheer” on the members of Congress who were objecting to the certification of the Electoral College vote.
“… We’re going to walk down to the Capitol — and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them,” Trump said. “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”