Trump says impeachment causing ‘tremendous anger’
President Donald Trump emerged from isolation at the White House on Tuesday to deny responsibility for a mob of his supporters storming Congress, and warning that his imminent impeachment is causing “tremendous anger.”
Trump — set Wednesday to become the first president in US history impeached for a second time — made clear he takes no blame for the January 6 speech in which he urged supporters to march on Congress.
“They’ve analysed my speech in my words and my final paragraph, my final sentence, and everybody to the tee just thought it was totally appropriate,” Trump said before flying to Texas. Trump called his scheduled impeachment in the House of Representatives on Wednesday a “continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics.”
And he warned that while “you have to always avoid violence,” his supporters are furious.
“I’ve never seen such anger as I’ve seen right now,” he said.
With only eight days left in his one-term administration, Trump finds himself alone, shunned by former supporters, barred by social media, and now facing the unprecedented stain of a second impeachment.
No longer able to use Twitter and Facebook — two platforms integral to his shock rise to power in 2016 — Trump is for the first time struggling to shape the news message, a censoring by Big Tech that he called a “catastrophic mistake.” His trip to Alamo, Texas, where he will tout claims of success in building a US-Mexican border wall, is his first live public appearance since last week’s chaotic events.
This is not the same Alamo as the famous fortress in another part of Texas, but the trip still marks something of a last stand.
Ever since the November 3 election, the Republican real estate tycoon has been obsessively pushing a lie that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, was the real winner. Then last week, in a speech on the National Mall, he called on the huge crowd to go to Congress and “show strength.”