According to testimony, the staff member explained, “There was a riot at the Capitol, so the communications were cut off.” Trump didn’t understand for a moment, but then he got it.
“Oh really,” he said, the attendant said. “And he said, ‘Okay, let’s go and check it out.'”
“For hours he watched the attack on his television screen,” the commission’s final report explained. “His channel of choice was Fox News. He posted several tweets, some of his own volition and some at the repeated urging of his daughter and other trusted advisers. He made several calls to his personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, and to members of Congress to continue his challenge to the election certification, even as the attack was well underway.”
One of the lawmakers Trump spoke to was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who urged Trump to issue a statement urging the rioters to retreat. According to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who was initially informed of the call, Trump claimed the rioters were not his supporters but left-wing agitators. McCarthy, who saw firsthand that this was not true, rejected the idea.
“Well, Kevin,” Trump responded, “I think they’re just more upset about the theft of the election than you are.”
Details emerged that President Trump watched the attack for hours, suggesting he supported it. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly told Trump’s lawyers that the president “doesn’t believe they’re doing anything wrong.” When Trump eventually called on the rioters to leave the Capitol, he encouraged them to “go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
In the aftermath of the riot, Trump had no room for political recognition: He was widely condemned, his attempt to overturn the election results had failed, he lost access to major social media platforms and was largely pushed to the fringes.
But partisan animosity was powerful, and others on the right began to use the riots not as a way to support Trump, but to criticize his successor, Joe Biden. Those arrested for participating in the violence were framed as political prisoners or martyrs. The idea that the violence was the work of left-wing or government-sponsored agitators was widespread. By the time Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential nomination, he had begun to embrace the rioters (often called “J6 prisoners”) and often described them as victims. After all, his campaign had revolved around the idea that he, too, was a victim of overzealous partisan law enforcement. The rioters he had watched with approval on January 6 were now comrades in arms.
Last weekend, President Trump spoke at a rally in Las Vegas, where he offered his most vigorous support for the rioters, but has already pledged to consider pardons.
“Nobody has ever been treated more horribly than the J6 hostages,” Trump claimed, adding a moment later, “They were warriors, but really, they are first and foremost victims of what happened.” Ultimately, he claimed, shadowy figures with ties to police and the government encouraged them to enter the building — a common extremist tactic but one that is sharply at odds with the evidence of what happened that day.
Trump’s message that the government is out to attack right-wing Americans — and by extension that his charges are baseless and political — clearly has utility. But embracing the January 6 rioters as victims and/or heroes also seems a better reflection of how Trump felt about violence at the time: He said he loved them even as the rioting was ongoing.
Since then, Trump has occasionally tried to incite similar protests, urging his supporters to gather in large numbers in New York City in early 2023 as indictment looms.
“The overwhelmingly popular Republican candidate and former President of the United States will be arrested next Tuesday,” he wrote on social media at the time. “PROTEST! TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!”
No such protests occurred, nor did they occur when he suggested people gather in Miami while he was facing federal indictment there. As the trial in Manhattan progressed and neared its conclusion, he repeatedly claimed that protesters were being kept away from the courthouse (presumably to explain why no protests occurred) even as he called on his supporters, for example, to “Go out and peacefully protest. Rally behind MAGA. Save our country!”
No wonder Trump would call for such action. He has long drawn strength from shows of support, from attending rallies (which he often exaggerates) to supporters gathering outside the hospital where he is being treated for COVID-19. Imagine how he must have felt watching all those protesters literally fighting to keep him in power for hours on end. No wonder he continues to hope that protests will return.
Instead of visibly gathering to show their support, Trump’s supporters have often taken a less energy-intensive approach: threatening his opponents. Political scientist Donald Moynihan summarized some of these efforts in an essay he wrote over the weekend, as part of explaining how Trump has “normalized retaliation as the appropriate purview of presidential conduct and the exercise of political power.”
He is particularly focused on President Trump’s response to the attack on the Capitol and the reaction of his supporters.
“Half of the judges who presided over the January 6 trial reported an increase in threats and harassment,” Moynihan wrote. “The mother of a police officer who was assaulted by a rioter said he was beaten after the officer called Trump an authoritarian.”
Trump’s encouragement of this approach has helped to cement it in American politics, he concludes. However well-intentioned, having avenues for pressure outside of elections and the law would expand Trump’s ability to exert power if he were to return to the White House.
But part of what Trump is doing here may be simpler in intent. Trump loves attention and support and enthusiasm. No day garnered more of that enthusiasm than January 6, 2021, no matter how harmful it may have been to everyone else and to democracy. He understands the political value of treating the January 6 rioters as victims. But his gratitude for their efforts is arguably of a more personal nature.
If it is harmful to the nation, so be it.
