Trump Undermines His Jan. 6 Defense in Fox News Interview: ‘He Should Have Known’
Joshua Roberts / Reuters
In a recent interview with Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, Donald Trump inadvertently weakened his own defense regarding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, according to an analysis by Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.
During the interview, Trump recounted an incident in Minnesota where Governor Tim Walz allegedly asked for his help in dispersing a crowd of pro-Trump protesters. According to Trump, the crowd, carrying American and Trump flags, had gathered in a potentially hostile situation. Walz, now Kamala Harris’ running mate, reportedly reached out to Trump for assistance in calming the crowd.
“This was during the riots and everything,” Trump told Gutfeld. “They were MAGA people, you know, they like the American flag, all right, and they also had Trump [flags].”
Trump claimed he responded by tweeting a message of support for Walz, saying, “He’s a good man, the governor. He’s on our side.” According to Trump, the protesters quickly dispersed after reading his message. “It was sort of a beautiful thing in a lot of ways,” he added.
However, Bump pointed out that Walz had a different recollection of events. In 2021, the governor said that Trump’s tweet to “liberate Minnesota” during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic had led to armed protesters showing up at his house. Bump noted a similar pattern on Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump protesters gathered outside the Minnesota governor’s mansion, while Trump was in Washington, stoking anger over the 2020 election.
In the aftermath of his defeat, Trump had repeatedly claimed the election was stolen—despite no evidence—and told his supporters there were ways for him to remain president, inciting the anger that eventually led to the Capitol riot. As Bump observed, Trump encouraged the protest that erupted into chaos and violence, watching the events unfold on TV for over two hours before calling on his supporters to stand down, but not before praising them.
“If we take Trump at his word in the Gutfeld! conversation, he had seen how, in May 2020, his words encouraged protesters to threaten a Democratic official, and he had seen how he could quickly dispel that threat,” Bump wrote. “If this is true, it casts the Capitol riot in much darker terms. He should have known both how people would respond to his calls to action and requests to stand down.”
Even if Trump’s Minnesota anecdote is exaggerated or false, Bump argued that Trump was likely aware of his ability to incite and calm his base. This makes his claims of being an “innocent observer” on Jan. 6—such as his false assertion that he “had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech”—harder to believe, according to Bump. “He’d seen what his rhetoric could do, and he claims that he had the power to do more,” Bump concluded.
