During the presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked whether he had any regrets stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. It was a good question, which the Republican clearly struggled with.
“Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her,” the Republican said, adding: “Nobody on the other side was killed.”
It was, by any fair measure, a ridiculous comment, in part because the former president was clearly lying, and in part because the answer helped reflect Trump’s ongoing anti-law-enforcement posture. But just as notable was the GOP nominee’s “other side” comment — suggesting he saw rioters as his allies, and police officers as opponents.
Soon after, Trump also told the debate audience that he had reached out to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington ahead of the riot. “I said I’d like to give you 10,000 National Guard or soldiers,” he claimed. “They rejected me. Nancy Pelosi rejected me.”
This continues to be ridiculously untrue, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with reality really ought to know.
But perhaps most important of all was his claim, in reference to Jan. 6, that he had “nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech.”
(Pay particular attention in this clip to the comments at the 38-second mark, when Trump briefly used the word “we” to describe the insurrectionists, before correcting himself.)
Look, I recently wrote a book about Republicans rewriting recent history, and I included an entire chapter about GOP messaging surrounding Jan. 6. But even I was caught off-guard by his shamelessness on this one.
Trump summoned radicalized supporters to the nation’s capital. He filled them with lies. He explicitly told his mob, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He deployed his followers to Capitol Hill. He used social media to add fuel to the fire during the violence.
To hear the former president claim he had “nothing to do with that” is comparable to the iceberg claiming it had nothing to do with the sinking of the Titanic.
“I was at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Kamala Harris said soon after. “I was the vice president-elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation’s Capitol, to desecrate our nation’s Capitol. On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died. And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.”
What’s more, in case this isn’t obvious, Trump has spent the last several months defending Jan. 6 criminals, raising money for them, labeling them “victims” and “hostages,” and promising to reward them with day-one pardons — even those who violently clashed with law enforcement.
A recent Associated Press report noted that the former president has positioned “the violent siege and its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House.” This coincided with a related Semafor report on the degree to which the Republican has put Jan. 6 rioters “at the heart of his campaign.”
That report was published in March. It’s worse now.