The Harris campaign and its allies seized on former President Trump’s comments at a Univision town hall Wednesday in which he called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol a “day of love.”
A voter named Ramiro González raised concerns about Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the criticism of him by some of his former administration officials. González told the former president he was giving him a chance to win back his vote.
But Trump was largely dismissive of any concerns over the events of Jan. 6 , when a mob violently clashed with law enforcement at the Capitol to try to halt the certification of President Biden’s 2020 victory.
“You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me. They came because of the election,” said Trump, who had encouraged supporters to come to Washington, D.C., for a rally that day.
“Some of those people went down to the Capitol peacefully and patriotically. Nothing done wrong at all. Nothing done wrong. Action was taken. Strong action. Ashli Babbitt was killed,” he said, referring to one individual who was killed after entering the Capitol. “Nobody was killed. There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. … But that was a day of love.”
Multiple Harris campaign aides highlighted a social media post from Bulwark correspondent Andrew Egger, who noted the former president was referring to those who stormed the Capitol as “we” and to U.S. Capitol Police as “others.”
The Harris campaign’s rapid response highlighted the exchange as “Trump defends January 6 insurrectionists.”
In a press release, the Democratic nominee’s team sought to contrast her GOP rival’s answer with remarks from the vice president Wednesday in Pennsylvania, where she rallied alongside Republicans who have backed her candidacy.
“Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and he refused to accept the will of the people and the results of a free and fair election,” Harris said at the campaign event. “He sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they violently assaulted law enforcement officers, and threatened the life of his own vice president. And he refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 electoral defeat, as well as his alleged role in inciting the violence of Jan. 6, have been back in the spotlight over the past week.
The former president during a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait claimed there was a peaceful transfer of power in 2020 because he eventually left office.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) also seemingly leaned into the claims of election fraud in 2020, saying he did not think Trump lost the election “by the words that I would use,” despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud.
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