Many of us believed that Trump wouldn’t touch the insurrection topic or his election loss during his CPAC speech, having been warned by criminal defense attorneys who might know that his constant lies will be something to which prosecutors point as evidence of intent. And yet Trump spent between 25% to 33% of this “comeback speech” at CPAC complaining about the election, which – according to him, he quite obviously won.

But he did not bring up the insurrection in his speech, a topic no ex-president other than Trump could ignore. In an interview on FOX News after the CPAC speech, Trump was asked directly about whether he regretted what happened on January 6th.

Trump lied.

He began by talking about how many people attended his “peaceful protest” on the Mall, “one of the largest crowds I’ve ever spoken to, and it was all peaceful” while also saying that days before, he had told the Defense Department to send “tens of thousands” of troops to the Capitol (so how would he know it would not be peaceful?). Thus, according to Trump, he said that tens of thousands of troops should be sent to the Capitol. But they never went because Nancy Pelosi said it would look bad. According to Trump, Nancy Pelosi is to blame for the Capitol’s lack of security because Nancy Pelosi overruled the president of the United States. Does he even know how this sounds?

It is obviously a bald-faced lie. Indeed, when the call went out to the Pentagon for help, it was the Defense Department, and Michael Flynn’s brother, General Charles Flynn who talked about not wanting troops sent to the Capitol because of how it might “appear.” Nancy Pelosi played no role at all.

Trump then said he “didn’t watch the insurrection on television” which goes against all reporting, and that it “horrified” him, that he didn’t like it. This despite the fact that Trump told Kevin McCarthy that apparently the crowd was more upset about the election than McCarthy. Trump was not “horrified,” he put out a tweet stating Mike Pence let them down in the midst of the insurrection. He told the crowd that he loved them. He told the crowd he won the election.

In the interview, Trump spent less than two full sentences arguing he didn’t approve of the insurrection before he moved on to talking about protests in Portland, Seattle, and such as if they were the same thing.

This is how Trump rewrites history and he must not be allowed to rewrite this history. It is far too important.

Trump called in to Fox News after his CPAC speech and was asked by Steve Hilton about his response to the January 6 insurrection. He tried to shift blame to Pelosi before resorting to Black Lives Matter whataboutism. pic.twitter.com/5tjXcs12hF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 1, 2021

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak