Contrition has never been Donald Trump’s strong suit.
After a meandering speech at CPAC, the former president’s first public address since leaving office, Trump called into the safe space of Fox News Sunday night to sound off on the Jan. 6 rally that incited a crowd of his supporters to storm the Capitol, resulting in five deaths and millions of dollars in property damage.
“Do you get how bad it was, and is there anything looking back on it now that you would have done differently that day?” host Steve Hilton asked Trump.
Without answering the question, Trump boasted about the size of the crowd.
“It was tremendous numbers of people, not the Capitol, I’m talking about the rally itself. It was a love fest. It was a beautiful thing,” Trump said.
The former president then tried to shift the blame to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for the security failure.
At the rally that preceded the insurrection, Trump told his supporters that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” Trump’s legal attack dog, Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd “let’s have trial by combat,” and then tried to shrug off the quote as a “Game of Thrones” reference.
On Sunday evening, Hilton eventually got Trump to show a just little remorse. “Do you get how bad it was? I think people want to hear you say that.”
“I hate to see it. I think it’s terrible,” Trump said before launching into a rant about a “double standard” when it comes to Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle, Portland and elsewhere.
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
