Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Rioters believed they were following Trump's orders, says Rep. Joe Neguse" video.

  1. Trump was too giddy with excitement as he watched the Capitol insurrection unfold on TV to help stop it, advisors told The Washington Post. Former aides to Trump told CNN that Trump enjoyed watching his supporters assault the US Capitol in the final days of his presidency. Several lawmakers trapped in the Capitol during the siege told The Post that they tried reaching out to Trump for help but that their calls went unanswered. Lindsey Graham said he had to call Ivanka Trump when the president failed to pick up the phone. As the violence unfolded, Republicans and Democrats alike pleaded with Trump to intervene - to call on his supporters to stop. For hours, however, he remained silent, consumed by the spectacle of his followers wearing Trump hats and waving Trump flags as they stormed the Capitol. Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said that he heard from senior White House officials that President Trump was "delighted" to hear that his supporters were breaking into the Capitol building. “As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building,” Sasse told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt in an interview. “That was happening. He was delighted.” Aides told The Post they were surprised by Trump's unwillingness to take action as events were unfolding. White House staff members alerted Trump to the events at the Capitol at about 2 p.m. but rather than urge his followers to remain calm he took the opportunity to send out a tweet expressing his disappointment with his own Vice President Mike Pence, who had to flee for his life.
    13
  2. As Trump became further deranged on January 6, he falsely maintained that Pence had the ability to unilaterally change the election result. Pence rebuked Trump's false  claims in an 11-page letter sent to Trump  just before his "stop the steal" rally and riot. "It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not. Vesting the Vice President with unilateral authority to decide presidential contests would be entirely antithetical to the system of check and balances between branches of the government designed by the framers of the Constitution," Pence wrote. And like the wannabe tyrant that he is, Trump replied by blasting Pence for his action less than two hours later. “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump wrote in a tweet. Trump’s tweet came as protesters backing him stormed the Capitol.
    9