Liberals are having a fresh meltdown after former President Trump told a journalist he was taken by surprise during the January 6th, 2021, Capitol riot — contradicting the Biden White House’s official narrative of an “insurrection.”
In a taped conversation released by the New York Times’ journalist Maggie Haberman, Trump said he was “on the late side” of finding out about the protest and wasn’t watching TV at the time.
Trump says he was surprised
Haberman is the author of a new book about Trump, just the latest in an endless series of salacious, hostile screeds about the former president. He has dismissed Haberman’ work as “fake” and the product of a “trouble making creep.”
Trump obsessives on the left have been feasting over the latest “bombshells” in the text, which include the revelation that Trump ran for the presidency because he enjoys fame. (Shocker.)
As part of her publicity push, Haberman shared a tape with CNN in which Trump touches on the Capitol riot. Trump said he heard about the riot “afterwards” and had assumed the Capitol was in good hands with the police.
“I was not watching television,” he said. “I then later turned it on, and saw what was happening. I also had … confidence that … the Capitol, who didn’t want these 10,000 people, that they’d be able to control this thing,” Trump said. “And you don’t realize they did lose control.”
The endless witch hunt
Of course, Trump’s claims didn’t sit well with critics who have long accused him of having deliberately stoked an “insurrection.”
Reed Galen, co-founder of scandal-plagued Lincoln Project, said Trump “tells nothing but lies about his leading role in a conspiracy to overthrow the results of a valid election.”
The details of what Trump allegedly did or didn’t do during each minute of January 6th have remained an enduring fascination of liberal journalists and the partisan January 6th committee, which staged a series of cinematic hearings over the summer that are set to resume.
Trump’s role is also of interest to Biden’s Justice Department, which has been leading a highly unusual, politicized crackdown on those who attempted to challenge the “free and fair” 2020 election.
While Trump’s enemies haven’t moved on from January 6th, many on the left have shifted their attention to the FBI’s unprecedented raid of Trump’s Florida home. The raid, tied to a dispute over government records, has brought speculation of Trump’s indictment to a fever pitch.