WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump persisted Tuesday in saying during a nationally televised presidential debate that he had won the 2020 election and continued to take no responsibility for any of the mayhem that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the building to block the peaceful transfer of power.
The comments underscored the Republican’s refusal, even four years later, to accept the reality of his defeat and his unwillingness to admit the extent to which his falsehoods about his election loss emboldened the mob that rushed the Capitol, resulting in violent clashes with law enforcement. It also made clear that Trump’s grievances about 2020 remain central to his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as he continues to profess allegiance to the rioters.
Asked twice if he regretted anything he did on Jan. 6, when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and exhorted them to “fight like hell,” Trump at first responded by complaining that the questioner had failed to note that he had encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully and patriotically” and by noting that one of his backers, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot inside the building by a Capitol Police officer.
He also suggested that protesters who committed crimes during the 2020 racial injustice protests were not prosecuted. But a 2021 Associated Press review of documents in more than 300 federal cases stemming from the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death found that more than 120 defendants across U.S. pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial of federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy.
When the question about his actions on Jan. 6 arose again, he replied: “I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech. I showed up for a speech.”
But he ignored other incendiary language he used throughout the speech, during which he urged the crowd to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. Trump told the crowd: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” That’s after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, declared: “Let’s have trial by combat.”
Trump didn’t appeal for the rioters to leave the Capitol until more than three hours after the assault began. He then released a video telling the rioters it was time to “go home,” but added: “We love you. You’re very special people.”
He also repeated an oft-stated false claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “rejected” his offer to send “10,000 National Guard or soldiers” to the Capitol. Pelosi does not direct the National Guard. As the Capitol came under attack, she and then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called for military assistance, including from the National Guard.
Harris, for her part, pledged to “turn the page” from Jan. 6, when she was in the Capitol as democracy came under attack.
“So for everyone watching, who remembers what January 6th was, I say, ‘We don’t have to go back. Let’s not go back. We’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page.”
Trump’s false claims extended to his 2020 election loss. Dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own attorney general have said there was no evidence that fraud tipped the race or that the election was stolen.
Though Trump had seemed to acknowledge in a recent podcast interview that he had indeed “lost by a whisker,” he insisted Tuesday night that that was a sarcastic remark and resumed his boasts about the election.
“I’ll show you, Georgia, and I’ll show you Wisconsin, and I’ll show you Pennsylvania,” he said in rattling off states where he claimed, falsely, that he had won. “I’ll show we have so many facts and statistics.”
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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Melissa Goldin contributed to this report.