Trump downplays Jan. 6 on anniversary of Capitol siege and calls jailed rioters `hostages'
Former President Donald Trump, campaigning in Iowa Saturday, marked the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by casting the migrant surge on the southern border as the “real” insurrection.
Just over a week before the Republican nomination process begins with Iowa's kickoff caucuses, Trump continued to claim that countries have been emptying jails and mental institutions to fuel a record number of migrant crossings. There is no evidence that this is the case.
“When you talk about insurrection, what they're doing, that's the real deal. That's the real deal. Not patriotically and peacefully — peacefully and patriotically,” Trump said, quoting from his speech on Jan. 6, before a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol as part of a desperate bid to keep him in power after his 2020 election loss.
Trump's remarks came a day after Biden delivered
a speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where he cast Trump as a grave threat to democracy and called Jan. 6 a day when “we nearly lost America — lost it all.”
With a likely rematch of the 2020 election looming, both Biden and Trump have frequently invoked Jan. 6 on the campaign trail. Trump, who is under federal indictment for his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, has consistently downplayed or spread conspiracy theories about a riot in which his supporters — spurred by his lies about
election fraud — tried to disrupt the certification of Biden's win.
Trump also continued to bemoan the treatment of those who have been jailed for participating in the riot, again labeling them “hostages.” More than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes connected to the violence, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy.
Trump was holding a pair of commit-to-caucus events in Newton in central Iowa and Clinton in the state's far east just over a week before voting will begin on Jan. 15.
After Trump spoke in Newton, he signed hats and other items people in the crowd passed to him, including a copy of a Playboy magazine that featured him on the cover.
One man in the crowd, Dick Green, was standing about 15 feet away, weeping after the former president autographed his white “Trump Country” hat and shook his hand.
“It'll never get sold. It will be in my family,” Green said of the hat.
A caucus captain and a pastor in Brighton, Iowa, Green said he had prayed for four years to meet Trump.
“I'll never forget it,” he said. “It's just the beginning of his next presidency.”
Trump spent much of his speech assailing Biden, casting him as incompetent and the real threat to democracy. But he also attacked fellow Republicans, including the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose “no” vote derailed GOP efforts to repeal former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.