INTENT: Trump not only knew Jan. 6 would be violent, he wanted it
The seventh installment of the televised hearings by the House Select Committee investigating January 6th didn’t disappoint. One of today’s highlights included the committee’s revelation of a draft tweet by Donald Trump, written before the Capitol insurrection. In January, Twitter – along with Google parent company Alphabet, Facebook parent Meta, and Reddit – was subpoenaed to turn over records relating to “the spread of misinformation, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, domestic violent extremism, and foreign influence in the 2020 election,” according to a press release from the House Select Committee.
In the undated draft tweet, the insurrection-inciting outgoing president bragged about making a “Big Speech” on Jan. 6th, and encouraged his supporters to show up in droves, promising a march to the Capitol.
The Twitter employee who testified before the investigative panel on Tuesday says that this wasn’t the worst of the social media posts. The anonymous witness, responsible for content and platform moderation on Twitter, said that Trump got on the app’s radar in September 2020 when, during a presidential debate, Trump told the far-right white nationalist group The Proud Boys to “stand back, and stand by.”
And they did.
According to The Verge, the employee saw Trump’s Dec. 19th tweet urging his followers to “join him in protest,” and to “Be there. Will be wild.” Telling the panel:
“My concern was that the former president, for seemingly the first time, was speaking directly to extremist organizations and giving them directives. We had not seen that sort of direct communication before, and that concerned me.”
Another bombshell dropped was that Trump not only knew his speech at the Ellipse would rile up his base and incite violence towards his Vice President, Mike Pence – he wanted it to. He knew that his language was incendiary and MAGA would eat it up. He told his rabid fans, “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so.” But Trump went off script and added his own lines:
“You’re never going to take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”
We get a clip from Stephen Miller's deposition where Miller says that a White House lawyer wasn't happy with Trump putting pressure on Pence with last-minute insertions to his January 6 speech pic.twitter.com/Vxbqi29GsR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 12, 2022
Tuesday’s testimony shined an even brighter light on Trump’s intentions — and expectations — of violence on the day democracy almost fell. It’s not only undeniable how close we came to not having a democratic country anymore – it’s downright scary.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
