Good morning


Burger King has a full week of free food starting on Sunday, March 10 for rewards members. I have no idea how many BK reward members there are, but I can only think of one such person and that would be a TV character named Doug Heffernan.


Donald Trump has unloaded on Joe Biden for apologizing for using the word "illegal alien" to describe a murderer who entered the country illegally. Biden will pay the price for kneeling to the woke.

The former 'president' is always unloading a fresh pile of manure every time it opens it's mouth.

So what else is new?

The former 'president' is always unloading a fresh pile of manure every time it opens it's mouth.

That would explain why I rarely listen to him.  What does that say about all the folks that listen to almost everything he has to say?

That would explain why I rarely listen to him.  What does that say about all the folks that listen to almost everything he has to say?

Some are just infatuated with Trump and hang on his every utterance.

While complaining he gets too much attention, mind you.

Many also seem to go from everything out of his mouth is a lie to he is telling the truth when he says something outrageous several times a day.

It is like watching a tennis match. 

I really believe liberals pay FAR more attention to what falls out of Trump's mouth even more than the most rabid Trump supporters.

So we are supposed to ignore far right wing fascism?

Ignoring Hitler turned out to be a bad thing.

Ignoring Trump could be much worse.

You may need to recruit some help to battle all these imaginary far right fascists you see everywhere.

I suggest starting with the fine folks at the DNC, they seem really big on conspiracy theories and most likely would support your struggle against fascism!

“You may need to recruit some help to battle all these imaginary far right fascists you see everywhere.”

Or stop watching the f’tards on cnn and msnbc.

So we are supposed to ignore far right wing fascism?

Do you worry about hundreds of thousands of radical Muslims as much as you do an extremely small number of fascists?

Don't have to ignore, just simply recognize it for the extremely SMALL threat that it actually is. No need for panic and hysteria.

You might want to find out what a fascist is before you call everyone that doesn't agree with you one.

You might want to learn a little about Hitler before comparing anyone to him.  It is a bad look.

How about we charge Liz Cheney with obstruction of justice?

How about we charge Liz Cheney with obstruction of justice?

She won't be.  She's protected as she's fallen in with the bottom feeders.

Not quite as bright as the dems. She couldn't cover her tracks.

The New York Post has another blockbuster story on her this morning. To be posted at the right time.

How about we charge Liz Cheney with obstruction of justice?

Yet another quagmire.  Doesn't anyone remember that the J6 committee was orchestrated by Democrats?  Liz Cheney was just a useful tool.

And all republicans testified against the former 'president' for his role in inciting and planning the false electors if his insurrection/coup failed.

And all republicans testified against the former 'president' for his role in inciting and planning the false electors if his insurrection/coup failed.

And every last Democrat has hidden behind Republicans.  Democrats didn't do one damned thing -- it was all Liz Cheney.

WTF are you talking about??????

How about we give her the medal of freedom.

She has earned it.

What has that got to do with suppressing the truth concerning Trump requesting the National Guard?

Trump requesting the National Guard?

If Trump had requested the National Guard they would have been there. The president of the United states is the only person that can order the movements of the DC National Guard. 

Didn't you read it? 

The mayor of DC has final say. She didn't want 10,000 troops there.

On Thursday,   December 31 , says the current accepted narrative, the District of Columbia mayor rang an alarm about protests at the Joint Session of   Congress . In fact, the opposite is true. What the mayor did, was ask for the minimal number of National Guardsmen and women to help out the Metropolitan   Police   Department, and she warned that those troops should be unarmed and not directly involve themselves in any protests.

Mayor Muriel Bowser sent a letter on New Year's Eve to Maj. Gen. William Walker, commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, requesting support on January 5 through 6. She said Guard personnel would support the MPD and the District Fire and Emergency Medical Services. "[N]o DCNG personnel shall be armed during this mission, and at no time, will DCNG personnel or assets be engaged in domestic surveillance, searches, or seizures of [U.S.] persons," she wrote.

Underestimating the Threat, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Ordered Up Unarmed Guards (newsweek.com)

The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress.

Former chief Steven Sund --   who  resigned his post  last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for him to step down  --  made the assertions in an interview with  The Washington Post  published Sunday.

Sund contradicts claims made by officials after Wednesday's assault on Capitol Hill. Sund's superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it.

Ex-Capitol Police Chief Says Requests For National Guard Denied 6 Times In Riots : Capitol Insurrection Updates : NPR

The evidence that Trump ordered "10,000" national guard to be ready for Jan 6 is fictional. 

The DC national guard is nowhere near that size. 

There is not a single shred of documentation that Trump had 10,000 national guard troops on standby.

The evidence that Trump ordered "10,000" national guard

He cannot order them!  He can recommend... The DC Mayor has to approve.

The evidence is in. You are in denial. As soon as a few others get here, I'll hit them with it too!

All the lies are coming to light…. the question is if anyone will ever be held accountable

Ahh, nothing like playing words with friends. The reporting I've read on what Trump had said was that he suggested they would need 10k troops. Liz (bless her heart) has responded that Trump never ordered 10k troops.  Guess this is part of our national divide, with the parsing of words. 

Ahh, nothing like playing words with friends.

He is trying to figure a way to play it. There is no getting around it. Trump told the truth and the Jan 6th Committee tried to hide it.

Today’s D.C. National Guard remains strong with more than 2,700 Soldiers and Airmen available to execute its missions. D.C. National Guard Soldiers and Airmen resides within the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, and are proud to be from the communities in which we protect and serve.  

The D.C National Guard was formed in 1802 by President Thomas Jefferson to defend the newly created District of Columbia. As such, the Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard is subordinate solely to the President of the United States.  This authority to activate the D.C. National Guard has been delegated, by the President, to the Secretary of Defense and further delegated to the Secretary of the Army.   The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President. 

The D.C. National Guard provides mission-ready personnel and units for active duty in the armed services in the time of war or national emergency.  The D.C. National Guard also retains the mission as protector of the District of Columbia.

dc.ng

In honor of last nights Oscar's...

The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President. 

This resulted in a delay of nearly three hours to deploy the D.C. National Guard on January 6 that came under fire almost immediately following the Capitol riot.  The DC mayor currently has control of the Guard via The District of Columbia National Guard Home Rule Act.

The DC mayor currently has control of the Guard via The District of Columbia National Guard Home Rule Act.

It doesn't and DoD has denied her request for Guard assistance with migrants bused to the city.

We both know it has nothing to do with it.  Just more fiction being use as another distraction 

The DC national guard is nowhere near that size

Link?  Or does this go with the rest of your fiction?

Facts at a glance:

Number of Soldiers: 1,350
Number of Airmen: 1,100

dc.ng

Hopefully all far right wing fascists will be held accountable for their anti democracy insanity.

Hopefully all far right wing fascists will be held accountable for their anti democracy insanity.

what about the far left communists or are you ok with them?

Hopefully all far right wing fascists will be held accountable

Hope accomplishes nothing, it’s not a process.

well hell, i was hoping hoping accomplished more, cause without hoping, what else could one hope for...?

Yes, all of the former 'president's' lies are coming to light . . . the question is if it will ever be held accountable.

The parsing of words???????????????

You mean 'Honest Don'?

They got caught!

They hid the truth.

The facts that you and others will not accept!

What facts and truth are you referring to?

When the former 'president' was told pence was being moved to a secure location, it said 'so what'?

Even if this current band of nonsense you are peddling were true it would not totally exonerate trump, it wouldn't exonerate him at all.

The evidence of trump's criminal behavior related to the stolen election matter goes far beyond whether or not he OK'd  National Guard troops to be at the capitol building.

Since you don't know anything about the January 6th charges you come up with the conclusion that he is exonerated it is ridiculous

Just amazing how quickly some Trump supporters will leap to defend him.   It does not matter what is actually the truth, headlines are good enough for some.

The Jan 6th committee was nothing more than a Pelosi hand picked TDS driven mighty mental midget show with a predetermined outcome. It has been proven repeatedly they hid any witness testimony that didn't fit their narrow narrative; altered evidence; and then destroyed anything that might have damned them.

The only reason they will not be charged with obstruction is Garland is the most partisan POS AG in the history of the country.

a delusional comment...

That is easy to say when you're battling zero hundred...

It is easy!!!

Now, we can clearly see what others tried to tell us:

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg said last week that former President Donald Trump did in fact request National Guard troops be deployed in Washington D.C. before the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kellogg said he was present at the time of Trump’s request, and Congress should release his testimony to the public.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he requested National Guard troops be activated in D.C. to provide security as he called on supporters to gather in D.C. to protest the certification of the 2020 election results for Joe Biden. Trump’s  claim has been substantiated  by members of his administration, but  rejected by some members  of Congress.

Kellogg, who was serving as Vice President Mike Pence’s National Security Advisor at the time of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach, tweeted last week, “To be clear on 6 Jan/NG. Pg 199 of my book, ‘On 3 Jan the President asked the Def Dept to deploy NG troops’ into DC for J6 contingencies. OK for J6 Cmte to publicly release my full sworn testimony. Release Army Guard and DC Mayor J6 testimonies as well. Would be illuminating.”

According to an initial  timeline  published by the U.S. Capitol Police, a Pentagon employee named Carol Corbin reached out to Capitol Police Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher on Jan. 2, 2021 to determine whether Capitol Police were considering a request for National Guard soldiers in anticipation of planned election protest events on January 6. Gallagher replied on Jan. 3 that the Capitol Police were not planning to make such a request.

According to a Department of Defense Inspector General  report  from November, Trump asked acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on Jan. 3 about preparations for election protests on Jan. 6.

“The President told Mr. Miller that there would be a large number of protestors on January 6, 2021,” the DoD report states. “And Mr. Miller should ensure sufficient National Guard or Soldiers would be there to make sure it was a safe event. Gen Milley told us that Mr. Miller responded, ‘We’ve got a plan and we’ve got it covered.'”

Miller  testified  to Congress in May of 2021 that Trump also asked him if D.C.’s mayor had requested any National Guard troops and instructed him to “fill” a request.

A recent Washington Times op-ed criticized the  House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach . The op-ed said the select committee does not have legitimate Republican representation. Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) are the only two Republicans currently allowed on the committee.

David Bossie, who wrote the Washington Times op-ed noted Jan. 3 conversation between Trump and Miller and said the Jan. 6 select committee is “crafting a narrative that doesn’t quite add up and omits important facts that would not stand if there were proper Republican representation on the committee.”

Bossie was deputy campaign manager of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Kellogg responded to Bossie’s op-ed in a tweet Friday, saying, “Great OpEd. Reinforces my earlier comment on 6 Jan Cmte. Has quote from DOD IG Report regarding 3 Jan 2021 meeting with Actg Def Secy Miller/CJCS Milley in the Oval on the 6 Jan NG request by POTUS on troops needed. I was in the room.”

Trump did call for Nat'l Guard troops before Jan. 6, ret. Gen. Kellogg says (americanmilitarynews.com)

Trump has repeatedly claimed he requested National Guard troops be activated in D.C. to provide security as he called on supporters to gather in D.C. to protest the certification of the 2020 election results for Joe Biden. 

Security?  What, so no one attacked the tourists visiting the Capital?

Mayor Bowser had been reluctant to approve of extra security, ever since the 2020 riots. You see, the wrong people might get hurt.

) The President commands the DC National Guard. If Trump had called for them, they would've been there. He did not call for them on Jan. 6th.

2) This "suppressed" testimony came courtesy of Tony Ornato and Barry Loudermilk, neither of which are even remotely credible.

Mayor Bowser has no authority over the Washington DC National Guard.

The President commands the DC National Guard.

That is no longer true:

House passes amendment to give mayor control of National Guard | wusa9.com

The fact is that Trump didn't order, he suggested . And that is what the Committee attempted to bury.


) This "suppressed" testimony came courtesy of Tony Ornato and Barry Loudermilk, neither of which are even remotely credible.

A Committee has no right to edit testimony.

) This "suppressed" testimony came courtesy of Tony Ornato and Barry Loudermilk, neither of which are even remotely credible.

Under the The District of Columbia National Guard Home Rule Act she does.

I'm sick of people attacking Liz Cheney over a Lie that Trump ordered 10,000 National Guard on January 6th. The facts all show this is NOT true: -

The only one who officially requested assistance from the National Guard was mayor Bowser. She was granted 340 soldiers before the event and 1100 during it. - There were no official requests or offers from Trump.

The DC national guard is run by the Pentagon, and therefore, the President. Trump could have deployed them if he gave an official order, which there is NO record of .

- Donald Trump’s own defense secretary, who is part of the chain of command for National Guard troop requests, testified UNDER OATH, that Trump had never signed an order to deploy National Guard troops to the Capitol.

- MAGA ally, Kash Patel claimed Trump ordered the national guard. Colorado Judge Wallace found that Kash Patel is “not a credible witness”. -

Chief Sund, Capitol Police Officer, says he requested assistance six times ahead of and during the attack on the Capitol. Each of those requests was denied or delayed. -

US Secret Service assistant director Tony Ornato told the committee in January 2022 he overheard conversation between Mark Meadows and DC Mayor Bowers that the President had approved 10,000 National Guard troops for January 6th Rally.

The problem is that this is hearsay and Trump NEVER officially called up the National guard. There would be evidence that he did.

Cheney will be remembered as a courageous woman who put America over Trump.

Brian Krassenstein on X: "I'm sick of people attacking Liz Cheney over a Lie that Trump ordered 10,000 National Guard on January 6th. The facts all show this is NOT true: - The only one who officially requested assistance from the National Guard was mayor Bowser. She was granted 340 soldiers before the… https://t.co/bA0EBOkNt6" / X (twitter.com)

That is no longer true: House passes amendment to give mayor control of National Guard | wusa9.com

It's still true, the Senate didn't agree with the House amendment. 

You keep saying he ordered. He made a suggestion and YOU people claimed that he didn't 

She hid the evidence!

Ok it is still true. And Trump made a suggestion.

I'm sick of people attacking Liz Cheney over a Lie

Then she shouldn't be a lying bitch who hid evidence. 

As usual they are trying to spin it from every direction. We had at least 3 people and a General say that Trump suggested 10,000 troops. We had testimony to back it up and Cheney buried it.  Now we have one pretending that Trump ORDERED the guard. NOBODY ever made that claim. And we have another guy saying well, he could have ordered them. He made a suggestion. They denied that he ever made any suggestion and Cheney hid it.

They are screwed again!

We had at least 3 people and a General say that Trump suggested 10,000 troops.

What analysis led to the number 10,000?  What kind of units?  What mission did Trump intend?

He should have made an order if that's what he wanted.

What analysis led to the number 10,000? 

So you are going to focus on the number?

Simple question:  Did Trump suggest the Guard?   YES OR NO?

He should have made an order if that's what he wanted.

We could argue that but that is clearly not the point.  The point Drinker: The lefties have denied all along that he ever made such a request. Obviously because it contradicts their narrative that he instigated the riot. Now we find out that they hid the evidence that he made the suggestion.

Trump probably did want 10,000 troops to assist him in his insurrection and to defend the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers!

[deleted]

The lefties have denied all along that he ever made such a request.

Perhaps, but it was in the DoD report

Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller testified that he had a 30 second call with Trump on 5 Jan and that Trump remarked that “they” were going to need 10,000 troops on Jan. 6, according to a statement Miller provided to a House committee in May 2021.

But Miller added that there was “no elaboration,” and he took the comment to mean “a large force would be required to maintain order the following day.” He noted that domestic law enforcement believed they had sufficient personnel.

Maybe the Army didn't follow his suggestion because they didn't believe that he knew anything about security with a suggestion out of the blue 24 hours out.  Or maybe they were worried that troops would start shooting if their orders weren't followed.

So you are going to focus on the number?

Yes, deployments require mission analysis and planning or people get hurt.

Simple question:  Did Trump suggest the Guard?   YES OR NO?

I don't know if his suggestion was the Guard or Active Duty.  24 hours out, the only way to get 10,000 that quickly would have been the 82nd Airborne Division in NC and they probably couldn't muster that many.  

His suggestion clearly was an ignorant one.

Here is what we know vic

in the afternoon of January 6 trump sat  watching television, watching the TV broadcast of the riot that was taking place at the capitol.

there is testimony from numerous people who were there who say that trump did absolutely nothing to try and  end the riot. Either by ordering troops to go there or by sending a message to his followers there who were observing his every word on Twitter

a few months ago Kristin Welker from Meet the Press asked trump directly what he was doing in the White House while the riot was taking place,  and he said "I'm not going to tell you"

But it was true then . . . . he didn't order diddly

Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller testified that he had a 30 second call with Trump on 5 Jan and that Trump remarked that “they” were going to need 10,000 troops on Jan. 6, according to a statement Miller provided to a House committee in May 2021.

That is all I'm saying before I allowed you to take me down a rabbit hole.

I don't know

You just admitted to it in post 5.1.18


His suggestion clearly was an ignorant one.

It was a conversation about what kind of security was needed. In hindsight, I'd say it was a very intelligent estimate.

As opposed to a partisan committee willing to hide testimony simply because they won't admit that something Trump said was true.

Here is one last question for you:

Didn't this committee omit the words "go peacefully" from his speech?

I suppose you don't know that either.

You keep saying he ordered. He made a suggestion and YOU people claimed that he didn't 

Nobody said that he didn't make an offer. Read the Executive Summary. The pertinent parts are here (point 17, page 6 of the text file ):

1. President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day. Nor did he instruct any Federal law enforcement agency to assist. Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense could, and ultimately did deploy the Guard. Although evidence identifies a likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense impacting the timing of deployment, the Committee has found no evidence that the Department of Defense intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard. The Select Committee recognizes that some at the Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election.

So this whole article is based on the presumption that Elizabeth Cheney said "he never offered" not "he never ordered" the National Guard to protect whatever. The actual areas or people are uncertain. A strong case can be made for his wanting the National Guard to walk with him and the "peaceful protesters" down Pennsylvania Avenue. See your supposed revelatory and just released Ornato interview, on or about pages 78-81.(Sorry, I don't have them at my disposal currently.) 

And then we get to the whole, "Rest of the Story," which is this supposed bombshell of a revelation is nothing of the sort. There is no exculpatory evidence from Mr. Oranato's transcribed interview without distortion of the evidence in-toto. So, one can pretend that Trump didn't try to :

1. Beginning election night and continuing through January 6th and thereafter, Donald Trump purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud related to the 2020 Presidential election in order to aid his effort to overturn the election and for purposes of soliciting contributions. These false claims provoked his supporters to violence on January 6th.
2. Knowing that he and his supporters had lost dozens of election lawsuits, and despite his own senior advisors refuting his election fraud claims and urging him to concede his election loss, Donald Trump refused to accept the lawful result of the 2020 election. Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome.
3. Despite knowing that such an action would be illegal, and that no State had or would submit an altered electoral slate, Donald Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes during Congress’s joint session on January 6th.
4. Donald Trump sought to corrupt the U.S. Department of Justice by attempting to enlist Department officials to make purposely false statements and thereby aid his effort to overturn the Presidential election. After that effort failed, Donald Trump offered the position of Acting Attorney General to Jeff Clark knowing that Clark intended to disseminate false information aimed at overturning the election.
5. Without any evidentiary basis and contrary to State and Federal law, Donald Trump unlawfully pressured State officials and legislators to change the results of the election in their States.
6. Donald Trump oversaw an effort to obtain and transmit false electoral certificates to Congress and the National Archives.
7. Donald Trump pressured Members of Congress to object to valid slates of electors from several States.
8. Donald Trump purposely verified false information filed in Federal court.
9. Based on false allegations that the election was stolen, Donald Trump summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for January 6th. Although these supporters were angry and some were armed, Donald Trump instructed them to march to the Capitol on January 6th to “take back” their country.
10. Knowing that a violent attack on the Capitol was underway and knowing that his words would incite further violence, Donald Trump purposely sent a social media message publicly condemning Vice President Pence at 2:24 p.m. on January 6th.
11. Knowing that violence was underway at the Capitol, and despite his duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, Donald Trump refused repeated requests over a multiple hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, and instead watched the violent attack unfold on television. This failure to act perpetuated the violence at the Capitol and obstructed Congress’s proceeding to count electoral votes.
12. Each of these actions by Donald Trump was taken in support of a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.
13. The intelligence community and law enforcement agencies did successfully detect the planning for potential violence on January 6th, including planning specifically by the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper militia groups who ultimately led the attack on the Capitol. As January 6th approached, the intelligence specifically identified the potential for violence at the U.S. Capitol. This intelligence was shared within the executive branch, including with the Secret Service and the President’s National Security Council.
14. Intelligence gathered in advance of January 6th did not support a conclusion that Antifa or other left-wing groups would likely engage in a violent counter-demonstration, or attack Trump supporters on January 6th. Indeed, intelligence from January 5th indicated that some left-wing groups were instructing their members to “stay at home” and not attend on January 6th. 20 Ultimately, none of these groups was involved to any material extent with the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.
15. Neither the intelligence community nor law enforcement obtained intelligence in advance of January 6th on the full extent of the ongoing planning by President Trump, John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani and their associates to overturn the certified election results. Such agencies apparently did not (and potentially could not) anticipate the provocation President Trump would offer the crowd in his Ellipse speech, that President Trump would “spontaneously” instruct the crowd to march to the Capitol, that President Trump would exacerbate the violent riot by sending his 2:24 p.m. tweet condemning Vice President Pence, or the full scale of the violence and lawlessness that would ensue. Nor did law enforcement anticipate that President Trump would refuse to direct his supporters to leave the Capitol once violence began. No intelligence community advance analysis predicted exactly how President Trump would behave; no such analysis recognized the full scale and extent of the threat to the Capitol on January 6th.
16. Hundreds of Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers performed their duties bravely on January 6th, and America owes those individuals immense gratitude for their courage in the defense of Congress and our Constitution. Without their bravery, January 6th would have been far worse. Although certain members of the Capitol Police leadership regarded their approach to January 6th as “all hands on deck,” the Capitol Police leadership did not have sufficient assets in place to address the violent and lawless crowd. 21 Capitol Police leadership did not anticipate the scale of the violence that would ensue after President Trump instructed tens of thousands of his supporters in the Ellipse crowd to march to the Capitol, and then tweeted at 2:24 p.m. Although Chief Steven Sund raised the idea of National Guard support, the Capitol Police Board did not request Guard assistance prior to January 6th. The Metropolitan Police took an even more proactive approach to January 6th, and deployed roughly 800 officers, including responding to the emergency calls for help at the Capitol. Rioters still managed to break their line in certain locations, when the crowd surged forward in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet. The Department of Justice readied a group of Federal agents at Quantico and in the District of Columbia, anticipating that January 6th could become violent, and then deployed those agents once it became clear that police at the Capitol were overwhelmed. Agents from the Department of Homeland Security were also deployed to assist.
17. President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day. Nor did he instruct any Federal law enforcement agency to assist. Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense could, and ultimately did deploy the Guard. Although evidence identifies a likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense impacting the timing of deployment, the Committee has found no evidence that the Department of Defense intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard. The Select Committee recognizes that some at the Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election.

But the road is all uphill.

Simple question:  Did Trump suggest the Guard?   YES OR NO?

He was the PotUS.   He does not need to suggest and get approval or agreement.   He was the CiC.   The PotUS does not have an excuse of:  "I offered but they turned me down".  

It is not credible that Trump was intending to send in the NG but did not do so because Pelosi (or whomever) rejected the idea.    At what point in time does Trump think anyone other than himself is the smartest guy in the room? 

You still refuse to accept facts.

So this whole article is based on the presumption that Elizabeth Cheney said "he never offered" not "he never ordered" the National Guard to protect whatever.

Nope. The ARTICLE is based on the FACT that testimony was hidden from incoming members of congress.

You refuse to deliver the facts.

And you were blatant about it.

see @9

The ARTICLE is based on the FACT that testimony was hidden

This article is a feeble attempt to exonerate Trump. Why are you running away from the truth?

5.1.11     author    Vic Eldred As usual they are trying to spin it from every direction. We had at least 3 people and a General say that Trump suggested 10,000 troops. We had testimony to back it up and Cheney buried it.  Now we have one pretending that Trump ORDERED the guard. NOBODY ever made that claim. And we have another guy saying well, he could have ordered them. He made a suggestion. They denied that he ever made any suggestion and Cheney hid it.

From the Article:

The biggest story of last week was all but buried by the dishonest left-wing media. It turns out that members of the partisan Jan 6th Committee suppressed evidence that President Donald Trump requested National Guard troops for the Jan 6th rally at the capital. I t is still hard to find many of the msm outlets covering the story. Only now are some of them acknowledging what a House Committee has uncovered:

WASHINGTON    - Today, Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk (GA-11) released a transcribed interview the January 6 Select Committee conducted with President Trump's former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato, which shows President Donald Trump pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the nation’s capital. (sic)

Your claim and the claim of the articles referenced was that evidence was covered up, specifically evidence about the National Guard troops and the offering of these troops by the president under the assumption that this evidence was somehow unobtainable from other sources and that the Select Committee had denied that the President had made the offer. These assertions, that from nowhere else could this information have been derived and that the Select Committee denied the existence of the offer, are false. Here is the claim of the Select Committee:

1. President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but  never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day. Nor did he instruct any Federal law enforcement agency to assist.  Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense could, and ultimately did deploy the Guard. Although evidence identifies a likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense impacting the timing of deployment, the Committee has found no evidence that the Department of Defense intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard. The Select Committee recognizes that some at the Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election.

The Select Commitee did not deny the presence of the offer, they said that the President never ordered, which are two different things. Also, the presence of the offer is available in other documents present in the evidence. Further, Mr. Ornato's testimony is full of " I don't recall" to the point of absurdity. One would think that it was a regular day at the office with nothing to differentiate it from any other. His testimony did indeed differ to the point of contradiction from multiple witness accounts including those of Mr. Robert Engle, Secret Service agent, a military aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, et al. From these discrepancies it was determined that Mr. Ornato's testimony was unreliable. 

As for the claim that the Transcript was buried so that the American public at large could not know of it, why is it stated on page 8, lines 21-23 of the transcript of November 29,2022:

So, Mr. Ornato, we have had two prior interviews of you, one on January
28th of this year and one on March the 29th of this year. Those interviews were based
on information that the committee had obtained to that point. 

And then there is this tid-bit from the report (pp.533-534 of the Report):

6.14 “WELL, I SHOULD WALK WITH THE PEOPLE.”
President Trump wanted to personaly acompany his suporters on the
march from the Elipse to the U.S. Capitol. During a January 4th meting
with stafers and event organizer Katrina Pierson, President Trump emphasized his desire to march with his suporters.429 “Wel, Ishould walk with
the people,” Pierson recaled President Trump saying.430 Though Pierson
said that she did not ake him “seriously,” she knew that “he would absolutely want o be with the people.”431 Pierson pointed out hat President
Trump “did the drive-by the first ime and the flyover the second time”—a reference to the November and December 2020 protests in Washington,
DC.432 During these previous events, President Trump made cameo apearances to fire up his suporters. Now, as January 6th aproached, the
President again wanted to be there, on the ground, as his suporters
marched on the U.S. Capitol.
The President’s advisors tried to talk him out of it. White House Senior
Advisor Max Miler “shot it down immediately” because of concerns about
the President’s safety.433 Pierson agred.434 But President Trump was persistent, and he floated the idea of having 10,00 National Guardsmen
deployed to protect him and his suporters from any suposed threats by
leftwing counter-protestors.435 Miler again rejected the President’s idea,
saying that he National Guard was not necesary for the event. Miler testified that here was no further conversation on the mater.436 After the
meting, Miler texted Pierson, “Just glad we kiled the national guard and
a procesion.”437 That is, President Trump briefly considered having the
National Guard overse his procesion to the U.S. Capitol. The President did
not order the National Guard to protect he U.S. Capitol, or to secure the
joint sesion procedings.
Although his advisors tried to talk the President out of personaly going,
they understod that his suporters would be marching.438 Pierson’s
agenda for the meting reflected the President’s plan for protestors to go to
the U.S. Capitol after the raly.439 But President Trump did not give up on
the idea of personaly joining his suporters on their march, as discused
further in Chapter 7.

It appears that Trump has an infatuation with the number 10,000 in reference to National Guard Troops. Which, as is shown elsewhere in these comments, is just a number that he pulled out of nowhere, probably because it is large and round.

If you can point to a source in the report detailing where it is stated that there was no offer from the President or his staff I will check it out. As it stands, I can find it nowhere except in claims made by others, not from the Select Committee itself.

And finally, this looks to me to be deflection, for the obvious reason that Trump is in fact guilty of the actions ascribed to him by the Select Committee and the powers that be on the Party of Trump side of the aisle are desperate to tar anyone with anything that they can find, no matter how petty and vindictive it makes them appear.

Petty and vindictive, now there is something the former President and those who follow him can get behind.

Didn't this committee omit the words "go peacefully" from his speech?

Quit relying on your pro-Trump sources and do your own research!

This is not a deep fake, Vic.

i could be mistaken, but i thought go peacefully was pre-inswrectionist riot, when Trump was energizing his 'peaceful peeps' with his "fight like hell, or we won't have a country ' BS , not an exact quote obviously, but you get my drift, just like his supporters, got his...

There were two cases that I know of.   Before the insurrection and at the end.   I posted the video of after because that proves the Jan 6 committee made no attempt to hide peaceful language by Trump.

I do not know if the Jan 6 committee included the pre-insurrection phrase in its videos, but it is likely not given they included very few excerpts from his incendiary pre-insurrection speech.

But to give an example of how absurd this 'peaceful' claim is, here is the full transcript of Trump's pre-insurrection speech.   It is not necessary to read it, I included it all to illustrate where the single spot 'peaceful' word was included.  Once; buried in the middle of this speech.  Note how much language followed and note the lack of any peace talk at the end right before the march to the Capitol.

And then note the language that he ended with , right before the march started.   The words in the minds of his supporters were 'fight' language.

This is classic Trumpism.   Just like his fraud case where he states that his fraudulent documents have a disclaimer that instructs lenders to do their own research, Trump has a single word 'peaceful' in this entire speech ... a speech which otherwise is incendiary.

npr

Well, thank you very much. This is incredible.

Media will not show the magnitude of this crowd. Even I, when I turned on today, I looked, and I saw thousands of people here. But you don't see hundreds of thousands of people behind you because they don't want to show that.

We have hundreds of thousands of people here and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media. Turn your cameras please and show what's really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer. They're not going to take it any longer. Go ahead. Turn your cameras, please. Would you show? They came from all over the world, actually, but they came from all over our country.

I just really want to see what they do. I just want to see how they covered. I've never seen anything like it. But it would be really great if we could be covered fairly by the media. The media is the biggest problem we have as far as I'm concerned, single biggest problem. The fake news and the Big tech.

Big tech is now coming into their own. We beat them four years ago. We surprised them. We took them by surprise and this year they rigged an election. They rigged it like they've never rigged an election before. And by the way, last night they didn't do a bad job either if you notice.

I'm honest. And I just, again, I want to thank you. It's just a great honor to have this kind of crowd and to be before you and hundreds of thousands of American patriots who are committed to the honesty of our elections and the integrity of our glorious republic.

All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved.

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.

You know, I say, sometimes jokingly, but there's no joke about it: I've been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. OK. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country, 12 million more people than four years ago.

And I was told by the real pollsters — we do have real pollsters — they know that we were going to do well and we were going to win. What I was told, if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago, to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn't go to 66, we went to 75 million, and they say we lost. We didn't lose.

And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It's a disgrace. There's never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we've been going through in this country. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace.

Even when you look at last night. They're all running around like chickens with their heads cut off with boxes. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. There's never been anything like this.

We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen, I'm not going to let it happen.

(Audience chants: "Fight for Trump.")

Thank you.

And I'd love to have if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed. The military, the secret service. And we want to thank you and the police law enforcement. Great. You're doing a great job. But I'd love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let him come up, please?

And Rudy, you did a great job. He's got guts. You know what? He's got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican Party. He's got guts. He fights, he fights.

And I'll tell you. Thank you very much, John. Fantastic job. I watched. That's a tough act to follow, those two. John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and he said, "What an absolute disgrace that this can be happening to our Constitution."

And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so.

Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.

States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.

And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.

Many of you have traveled from all across the nation to be here, and I want to thank you for the extraordinary love. That's what it is. There's never been a movement like this, ever, ever. For the extraordinary love for this amazing country, and this amazing movement, thank you.

(Audience chants: "We love Trump.")

By the way, this goes all the way back past the Washington Monument. You believe this? Look at this. That is. Unfortunately gave, they gave the press the prime seats. I can't stand that.

No. But you look at that behind. I wish they'd flip those cameras and look behind you. That is the most amazing sight. When they make a mistake, you get to see it on television. Amazing. Amazing. All the way back.

And don't worry, we will not take the name off the Washington Monument. We will not cancel culture.

You know they wanted to get rid of the Jefferson Memorial. Either take it down or just put somebody else in there. I don't think that's going to happen. It damn well better not. Although, with this administration, if this happens, it could happen. You'll see some really bad things happen.

They'll knock out Lincoln too, by the way. They've been taking his statue down. But then we signed a little law. You hurt our monuments, you hurt our heroes, you go to jail for 10 years, and everything stopped. You notice that? It stopped. It all stopped.

And they could use Rudy back in New York City. Rudy. They could use you. Your city's going to hell. They want Rudy Giuliani back in New York. We'll get a little younger version of Rudy. Is that OK, Rudy?

We're gathered together in the heart of our nation's capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy.

You know most candidates on election evening and, of course, this thing goes on so long. They still don't have any idea what the votes are. We still have congressional seats under review. They have no idea. They've totally lost control. They've used the pandemic as a way of defrauding the people in a proper election.

But you know, you know, when you see this and when you see what's happening. Number one, they all say, "Sir, we'll never let it happen again." I said, "That's good. But what about eight weeks ago?" You know they try and get you to go.

They said, "Sir, in four years, you're guaranteed." I said: "I'm not interested right now. Do me a favor, go back eight weeks. I want to go back eight weeks. Let's go back eight weeks."

We want to go back and we want to get this right because we're going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed and we're not going to stand for that.

For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that's what they are. There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it's, it's incredible.

Many of the Republicans, I helped them get in, I helped them get elected. I helped Mitch get elected. I helped. I could name 24 of them, let's say, I won't bore you with it. And then all of a sudden you have something like this. It's like, "Oh gee, maybe I'll talk to the president sometime later." No, it's amazing.

They're weak Republicans, they're pathetic Republicans and that's what happens.

If this happened to the Democrats, there'd be hell all over the country going on. There'd be hell all over the country. But just remember this: You're stronger, you're smarter, you've got more going than anybody. And they try and demean everybody having to do with us. And you're the real people, you're the people that built this nation. You're not the people that tore down our nation.

The weak Republicans, and that's it. I really believe it. I think I'm going to use the term, the weak Republicans. You've got a lot of them. And you got a lot of great ones. But you got a lot of weak ones. They've turned a blind eye, even as Democrats enacted policies that chipped away our jobs, weakened our military, threw open our borders and put America last.

Did you see the other day where Joe Biden said, I want to get rid of the America First policy? What's that all about? Get rid of. How do you say I want to get rid of America First? Even if you're going to do it, don't talk about it, right? Unbelievable what we have to go through. What we have to go through.

And you have to get your people to fight. And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight. You primary them. We're going to. We're going to let you know who they are. I can already tell you, frankly.

But this year, using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft and there's never been anything like this. So pure theft in American history. Everybody knows it.

That election, our election was over at 10 o'clock in the evening. We're leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, by hundreds of thousands of votes.

And then late in the evening, or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of bull****.

And all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen.

(Audience chants: "Bull****.")

Don't forget when Romney got beat. Romney, hey. Did you see his? I wonder if he enjoyed his flight in last night. But when Romney got beaten, you know, he stands up like you're more typical, "Well, I'd like to congratulate the victor." The victor? Who is the victor, Mitt? "I'd like to congratulate." They don't go and look at the facts. No, I don't know. He got, he got slaughtered. Probably, maybe it was OK, maybe it was. But that's what happened.

But we look at the facts and our election was so corrupt that in the history of this country we've never seen anything like it. You can go all the way back.

You know, America is blessed with elections. All over the world they talk about our elections. You know what the world says about us now? They said, we don't have free and fair elections.

And you know what else? We don't have a free and fair press. Our media is not free, it's not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it's become the enemy of the people. It's become the enemy of the people. It's the biggest problem we have in this country.

No third-world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing. And you'll hear about that in just a few minutes.

Republicans are, Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It's like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we're going to have to fight much harder.

And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.

Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. But whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time. Far longer than this four-year period. We've set it on a much greater course. So much, and we, I thought, you know, four more years. I thought it would be easy.

We've created the greatest economy in history. We rebuilt our military. We get you the biggest tax cuts in history. Right? We got you the biggest regulation cuts. There's no president, whether it's four years, eight years or in one case more, got anywhere near the regulation cuts.

Used to take 20 years to get a highway approved, now we're down to two. I want to get it down to one, but we're down to two. And it may get rejected for environmental or safety reasons, but we got it down to safety.

We created Space Force, We, we, we. Look at what we did. Our military has been totally rebuilt. So we create Space Force which, by and of itself, is a major achievement for an administration. And with us it's one of so many different things.

Right to Try. Everybody know about Right to Try. We did things that nobody ever thought possible. We took care of our vets, our vets. The VA now has the highest rating, 91%. The highest rating that it's had from the beginning, 91% approval rating. Always, you watch the VA, it was on television every night, people living in a horrible, horrible manner. We got that done. We got accountability done. We got it so that now in the VA, you don't have to wait for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, four months to see a doctor. If you can't get a doctor, you go outside, you get the doctor. You have it taken care of and we pay the doctor.

And we've not only made life wonderful for so many people, we've saved tremendous amounts of money, far secondarily, but we've saved a lot of money. And now we have the right to fire bad people in the VA. We had 9,000 people that treated our veterans horribly. In primetime, they would not have treated our veterans badly. But they treated our veterans horribly.

And we have what's called the account, VA Accountability Act. And the accountability says if we see somebody in there that doesn't treat our vets well or they steal, they rob, they do things badly, we say: "Joe you're fired. Get out of here." Before you couldn't do that. You couldn't do that before.

So we've taken care of things, we've done things like nobody's ever thought possible. And that's part of the reason that many people don't like us, because we've done too much.

But we've done it quickly and we were going to sit home and watch a big victory and everybody had us down for a victory. It was going to be great and now we're out here fighting. I said to somebody, I was going to take a few days and relax after our big electoral victory. 10 o'clock it was over. But I was going to take a few days.

And I can say this. Since our election, I believe, which was such a catastrophe, when I watch. And even these guys knew what happened. They know what happened. They're saying: "Wow, Pennsylvania's insurmountable. Wow, Wisconsin." Look at the big leads we had, right. Even though the press said we would lose Wisconsin by 17 points. Even though the press said, Ohio's going to be close, we set a record; Florida's going to be close, we set a record; Texas is going to be close, Texas is going to be close, we set a record.

And we set a record with Hispanic, with the Black community, we set a record with everybody.

Today we see a very important event though. Because right over there, right there, we see the event going to take place. And I'm going to be watching. Because history is going to be made. We're going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders, or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity they'll be ashamed.

And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never, ever forget that they did. Never forget. We should never ever forget.

With only three of the seven states in question, we win the presidency of the United States. And by the way, it's much more important today than it was 24 hours ago, because I don't. I spoke to David Perdue, what a great person, and Kelly Loeffler, two great people, but it was a setup.

And you know, I said, "We have no backline anymore." The only backline, the only line of demarcation, the only line that we have is the veto of the president of the United States. So this is now, what we're doing, a far more important election than it was two days ago.

I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. They're over there working like you've never seen before. Studying, talking, actually going all the way back, studying the roots of the Constitution, because they know we have the right to send a bad vote that was illegally gotten.

They gave these people bad things to vote for and they voted because what did they know? And then when they found out a few weeks later, again, it took them four years to devise this screen.

And the only unhappy person in the United States, single most unhappy, is Hillary Clinton. Because she said: "Why didn't you do this for me four years ago? Why didn't you do this for me four years ago? Change the votes, 10,000 in Michigan. You could have changed the whole thing." But she's not too happy. You know, you don't see her anymore. What happened? Where's Hillary? Where is she?

But I want to thank all of those congressmen and women. I also want to thank our 13, most courageous members of the U.S. Senate. Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Josh Hawley, Kelly Loeffler.

And Kelly Loeffler, I'll tell you, she has been, she's been so great. She worked so hard. So let's give her and David a little special hand because it was rigged against them. Let's give her and David.

Kelly Loeffler, David Purdue. They fought a good race. They never had a shot. That equipment should never have been allowed to be used, and I was telling these people don't let him use this stuff.

Marsha Blackburn, terrific person. Mike Braun, Indiana. Steve Daines, great guy. Bill Hagerty, John Kennedy, James Lankford, Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, the coach, and Roger Marshall. We want to thank them. Senators that stepped up, we want to thank them.

I actually think though, it takes, again, more courage not to step up, and I think a lot of those people are going to find that out and you better start looking at your leadership, because your leadership has led you down the tubes.

You know, we don't want to give $2,000 to people. We want to give them $600. Oh, great. How does that play politically? Pretty good? And this has nothing to do with politics, but how does it play politically?

China destroyed these people. We didn't destroy. China destroy them, totally destroyed them. We want to give them $600 and they just wouldn't change.

I said give them $2,000, we'll pay it back. We'll pay it back fast. You already owe 26 trillion, give them a couple of bucks. Let them live. Give them a couple of bucks. And some of the people here disagree with me on that, but I just say, "Look, you've got to let people live."

And how does that play though? OK. Number one, it's the right thing to do. But how does that play politically? I think it's the primary reason, one of the primary reasons, the other was just pure cheating. That was the primary, super primary reason. But you can't do that, you got to use your head.

As you know, the media has constantly asserted the outrageous lie that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Have you ever seen these people? While there is no evidence of fraud. Oh, really? Well, I'm going to read you pages. I hope you don't get bored listening to it. Promise? Don't get bored listening to it, all those hundreds of thousands of people back there. Move them up, please, yeah.

All they, all these people, don't get bored, don't get angry at me because you're going to get bored because it's so much.

The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop. You'd believe me, you'd believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you'd have an argument.

Now what they do is they go silent. It's called suppression and that's what happens in a communist country. That's what they do, they suppress. You don't fight with them anymore. Unless it's a bad story. They have a little bad story about me, they make it 10 times worse and it's a major headline.

But Hunter Biden, they don't talk about him. What happened to Hunter? Where's Hunter? Where's Hunter? They don't talk about him. They'll watch, all the sets will go off. Well, they can't do that because they get good ratings. Their ratings are too good. Now, where's Hunter? You know.

And how come Joe is allowed to give a billion dollars of money to get rid of the prosecutor in Ukraine? How does that happen? I'd ask you that question. How does that happen? Can you imagine if I said that? If I said that it would be a whole different ballgame.

And how come Hunter gets three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow's wife, and gets hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit on an energy board, even though he admits he has no knowledge of energy? And millions of dollars up front.

And how come they go into China and they leave with billions of dollars to manage. "Have you managed money before?" "No, I haven't." "Oh, that's good. Here's about 3 billion." No, they don't talk about that.

No, we have a corrupt media. They've gone silent. They've gone dead. I now realize how good it was if you go back 10 years, I realized how good, even though I didn't necessarily love them, I realized how good. It was like a cleansing motion, right?

But we don't have that anymore. We don't have a fair media anymore. It's suppression. And you have to be very careful with that and they've lost all credibility in this country.

We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes and the lies that we've been forced to believe.

Over the past several weeks, we've amassed overwhelming evidence about a fake election. This is the presidential election. Last night was a little bit better because of the fact that we had a lot of eyes watching one specific state, but they cheated like hell anyway.

You have one of the dumbest governors in the United States. And you know when I endorsed him, and I didn't know this guy, at the request of David Perdue, he said, "Friend of mine's running for governor." "What's his name?" And you know the rest. He was in fourth place, fifth place. I don't know, he was, he was doing poorly. I endorse him, he went like a rocket ship and he won.

And then I had to beat Stacey Abrams with this guy, Brian Kemp. I had to beat Stacey Abrams. And I had to beat Oprah, used to be a friend of mine. You know, I was on her last show, her last week, she picked the five outstanding people. I don't think she thinks that any more. Once I ran for president, I didn't notice there were too many calls coming in from Oprah. Believe it or not, she used to like me. But I was one of the five outstanding people.

And I had a campaign against Michelle Obama and Barack Hussein Obama, against Stacey.

And I had Brian Kemp, who weighs 130 pounds. He said he played offensive line in football. I'm trying to figure that out. I'm still trying to figure that out. He said that the other night, "I was an offensive lineman." I'm saying: "Really? That must have been a very small team." But I look at that and I look at what's happened and he turned out to be a disaster. This stuff happens.

You know, look, I'm not happy with the Supreme Court. They love to rule against me. I picked three people. I fought like hell for them. One in particular, I fought. They all said, "Sir, cut him loose." He's killing the senators. You know, very loyal senators, they're very loyal people, "Sir, cut him loose, he's killing us, sir, cut him loose." I must have gotten half of the senators.

I said: "No, I can't do that, it's unfair to him and it's unfair to the family. He didn't do anything wrong." They made up stories, they're all made-up stories. He didn't do anything wrong. "Cut him loose, sir." I said, "No, I won't do that. We got him through." And you know what, they couldn't give a damn. They couldn't give a damn. Let him rule the right way.

But it almost seems that they're all going out of their way to hurt all of us and to hurt our country. To hurt our country.

You know, I read a story in one of the newspapers recently how I control the three Supreme Court justices. I control them. They're puppets.

I read it about Bill Barr, that he's my personal attorney. That he'll do anything for me. And I said, "You know, it really is genius." Because what they do is that, and it makes it really impossible for them to ever give you a victory, because all of a sudden Bill Barr changed. If you hadn't noticed. I like Bill Barr, but he changed, because he didn't want to be considered my personal attorney.

And the Supreme Court, they rule against me so much. You know why? Because the story is — I haven't spoken to any of them, any of them, since virtually they got in — but the story is that they're my puppets. Right? That they're puppets.

And now the only way they can get out of that because they hate that it's not good in the social circuit. And the only way they get out is to rule against Trump. So let's rule against Trump. And they do that. So I want to congratulate them.

But it shows you the media's genius. In fact, probably if I was the media, I'd do it the same way. I hate to say it. But we got to get them straightened out.

Today, for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our Constitution, and for the sake of our children, we lay out the case for the entire world to hear. You want to hear it?

(Audience responds: "Yeah")

In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats, made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures.

That these changes paved a way for fraud on a scale never seen before. I think we go a long way outside of our country when I say that.

So, just in a nutshell, you can't make a change or voting for a federal election unless the state legislature approves it. No judge can do it. Nobody can do it. Only a legislature.

So as an example, in Pennsylvania, or whatever, you have a Republican legislature, you have a Democrat mayor, and you have a lot of Democrats all over the place. They go to the legislature. The legislature laughs at them, says we're not going to do that. They say, thank you very much and they go and make the changes themselves, they do it anyway. And that's totally illegal. That's totally illegal. You can't do that.

In Pennsylvania, the Democrat secretary of state and the Democrat state Supreme Court justices illegally abolished the signature verification requirements just 11 days prior to the election.

So think of what they did. No longer is there signature verification. Oh, that's OK. We want voter ID by the way. But no longer is there a signature verification. Eleven days before the election they say we don't want it. You know why they don't want to? Because they want to cheat. That's the only reason.

Who would even think of that? We don't want to verify a signature?

There were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Think of this, you had 205,000 more ballots than you had voters. That means you had two. Where did they come from? You know where they came from? Somebody's imagination, whatever they needed.

So in Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters. And the number is actually much greater than that now. That was as of a week ago. And this is a mathematical impossibility unless you want to say it's a total fraud.

So Pennsylvania was defrauded. Over 8,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were cast by people whose names and dates of birth match individuals who died in 2020 and prior to the election. Think of that. Dead people, lots of dead people, thousands. And some dead people actually requested an application. That bothers me even more.

Not only are they voting, they want an application to vote. One of them was 29 years ago, died. It's incredible. Over 14,000 ballots were cast by out-of-state voters, so these are voters that don't live in this state.

And by the way, these numbers are what they call outcome-determinative, meaning these numbers far surpass. I lost by a very little bit. These numbers are massive, massive.

More than 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania were illegally counted, even though they were received after Election Day. In other words, they were received after Election Day. Let's count them anyway.

And what they did in many cases is, they did fraud. They took the date and they moved it back so that it no longer is after Election Day. And more than 60,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were reported received back. They got back before they were ever supposedly mailed out. In other words, you got the ballot back before you mailed it, which is also logically and logistically impossible, right?

Think of that one. You got the ballot back. Let's send the ballots. Oh, they've already been sent. But we got the ballot back before they were sent. I don't think that's too good, right?

Twenty-five thousand ballots in Pennsylvania were requested by nursing home residents, all in a single giant batch, not legal, indicating an enormous, illegal ballot harvesting operation. You're not allowed to do it, it's against the law.

The day before the election, the state of Pennsylvania reported the number of absentee ballots that had been sent out. Yet this number was suddenly and drastically increased by 400,000 people. It was increased, nobody knows where it came from, by 400,000 ballots, one day after the election.

It remains totally unexplained. They said, "Well, ah, we can't figure that." Now, that's many, many times what it would take to overthrow the state. Just that one element. Four hundred thousand ballots appeared from nowhere right after the election.

By the way, Pennsylvania has now seen all of this. They didn't know because it was so quick. They had a vote. They voted. But now they see all this stuff, it's all come to light. Doesn't happen that fast. And they want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.

(Audience chants: "Send it back.")

And many people in Congress want it sent back.

And think of what you're doing. Let's say you don't do it. Somebody says, "Well, we have to obey the Constitution." And you are, because you're protecting our country and you're protecting the Constitution. So you are.

But think of what happens. Let's say they're stiffs and they're stupid people, and they say, well, we really have no choice. Even though Pennsylvania and other states want to redo their votes. They want to see the numbers. They already have the numbers. Go very quickly. And they want to redo their legislature because many of these votes were taken, as I said, because it wasn't approved by their legislature. You know, that, in itself, is legal. And then you have the scam, and that's all of the things that we're talking about.

But think of this. If you don't do that, that means you will have a president of the United States for four years, with his wonderful son. You will have a president who lost all of these states. Or you will have a president, to put it another way, who was voted on by a bunch of stupid people who lost all of these states.

You will have an illegitimate president. That's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen.

These are the facts that you won't hear from the fake news media. It's all part of the suppression effort. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. In fact, when I started talking about that, I guarantee you, a lot of the television sets and a lot of those cameras went off. And that's a lot of cameras back there. But a lot of them went off.

But these are the things you don't hear about. You don't hear what you just heard. I'm going to go over a few more states. But you don't hear it by the people who want to deceive you and demoralize you and control you. Big tech, media.

Just like the suppression polls that said we're going lose Wisconsin by 17 points. Well, we won Wisconsin. They don't have it that way because they lost just by a little sliver. But they had me down the day before, Washington Post/ABC poll, down 17 points.

I called up a real pollster. I said, "What is that?" "Sir, that's called a suppression poll. I think you're going to win Wisconsin, sir."

I said, "But why don't they make it four or five points?" Because then people vote. But when you're down 17, they say, "Hey, I'm not going to waste my time. I love the president, but there's no way."

Despite that, despite that, we won Wisconsin. It's going to see. I mean, you'll see. But that's called suppression because a lot of people when they see that. It's very interesting. This pollster said, "Sir, if you're down three, four, or five people vote. When you go down 17, they say, 'Let's save. Let's go and have dinner and let's watch the presidential defeat tonight on television, darling.'"

And just like the radical left tries to blacklist you on social media. Every time I put out a tweet, that's, even if it's totally correct, totally correct, I get a flag. I get a flag.

And they also don't let you get out. You know, on Twitter, it's very hard to come onto my account. It's very hard to get out a message. They don't let the message get out nearly like they should. But I've had many people say, "I can't get on your Twitter." I don't care about Twitter. Twitter's bad news. They're all bad news.

But you know what, if you want to, if you want to get out a message and if you want to go through Big tech, social media, they are really, if you're a conservative, if you're a Republican, if you have a big voice, I guess they call it shadow banned, right? Shadow banned. They shadow ban you, and it should be illegal.

I've been telling these Republicans, get rid of Section 230. And for some reason, Mitch and the group, they don't want to put it in there and they don't realize that that's going to be the end of the Republican Party as we know it, but it's never going to be the end of us. Never. Let them get out. Let, let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength.

They also want to indoctrinate your children in school by teaching them things that aren't so. They want to indoctrinate your children. It's all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy, and the American people are finally standing up and saying no. This crowd is, again, a testament to it.

I did no advertising, I did nothing. You do have some groups that are big supporters. I want to thank that, Amy, and everybody. We have some incredible supporters, incredible. But we didn't do anything. This just happened. Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said, "What are they there for?" "Sir, they're there for you."

We have nothing to do with it. These groups are for, they're forming all over the United States. And we got to remember, in a year from now, you're going to start working on Congress and we got to get rid of the weak Congress, people, the ones that aren't any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. We got to get rid of them. We got to get rid.

You know, she never wants a soldier brought home — I brought a lot of our soldiers home. I don't know, somewhat like it. They're in countries that nobody even knows the name, nobody knows where they are. They're dying. They're great, but they're dying. They're losing their arms, their legs, their face. I brought them back home, largely back home. Afghanistan, Iraq.

Remember, I used to say in the old days: "Don't go in Iraq. But if you go in, keep the oil." We didn't keep the oil. So stupid. So stupid these people. And Iraq has billions and billions of dollars now in the bank. And what did we do? We got nothing. We never get. But we do actually, we kept the oil here or we get, we did good.

We got rid of the ISIS caliphate. We got rid of plenty of different things that everybody knows and the rebuilding of our military in three years. People said it couldn't be done. And it was all made in the USA, all made in the USA, best equipment in the world.

In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat-run cities deployed more than 500 illegal, unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes. It was razor-thin, the loss. This one thing alone is much more than we would need. But there are many things.

They have these lockboxes. And, you know, they'd pick them up and they disappear for two days. People would say where's that box? They disappeared. Nobody even knew where the hell it was.

In addition, over 170,000 absentee votes were counted in Wisconsin without a valid absentee ballot application. So they had a vote, but they had no application, and that's illegal in Wisconsin. Meaning those votes were blatantly done in opposition to state law and they came 100% from Democrat areas such as Milwaukee and Madison, 100%.

In Madison, 17,000 votes were deposited in so-called human drop boxes. You know what that is, right? Where operatives stuff thousands of unsecured ballots into duffle bags on park benches across the city, in complete defiance of cease-and-desist letters from state legislature.

Your state legislatures said don't do it. They're the only ones that can approve it. They gave tens of thousands of votes. They came in in duffle bags. Where the hell did they come from?

According to eyewitness testimony, Postal Service workers in Wisconsin were also instructed to illegally backdate approximately 100,000 ballots. The margin of difference in Wisconsin was less than 20,000 votes. Each one of these things alone wins us the state. Great state. We love the state. We won the state.

In Georgia, your secretary of state who, I can't believe this guy's a Republican. He loves recording telephone conversations. You know, that was? I thought it was a great conversation personally. So did a lot of other. People love that conversation because it says what's going on.

These people are crooked. They're 100%, in my opinion, one of the most corrupt, between your governor and your secretary of state. And now you have it again last night. Just take a look at what happened. What a mess.

And the Democrat Party operatives entered into an illegal and unconstitution — unconstitutional settlement agreement that drastically weakened signature verification and other election security procedures.

Stacey Abrams. She took them to lunch. And I beat her two years ago with a bad candidate, Brian Kemp. But they took, the Democrats took the Republicans to lunch because the secretary of state had no clue what the hell was happening. Unless he did have a clue. That's interesting. Maybe he was with the other side.

But we've been trying to get verifications of signatures in Fulton County, they won't let us do it. The only reason they won't is because we'll find things in the hundreds of thousands. Why wouldn't they let us verify signatures in Fulton County, which is known for being very corrupt. They won't do it. They go to some other county where you would live.

I said, "That's not the problem." The problem is Fulton County, home of Stacey Abrams. She did a good job, I congratulate her. But it was done in such a way that we can't let this stuff happen. We won't have a country if it happens.

As a result, Georgia's absentee ballot rejection rate was more than 10 times lower than previous levels because the criteria was so off.

Forty-eight counties in Georgia, with thousands and thousands of votes, rejected zero ballots. There wasn't one ballot. In other words, in a year in which more mail-in ballots were sent than ever before, and more people were voting by mail for the first time, the rejection rate was drastically lower than it had ever been before.

The only way this can be explained is if tens of thousands of illegitimate votes were added to the tally. That's the only way you could explain it.

By the way, you're talking about tens of thousands. If Georgia had merely rejected the same number of unlawful ballots as in other years, they should have been approximately 45,000 ballots rejected. Far more than what we needed to win, just over 11,000. They should find those votes. They should absolutely find that. Just over 11,000 votes, that's all we need. They defrauded us out of a win in Georgia, and we're not going to forget it.

There's only one reason the Democrats could possibly want to eliminate signature matching, opposed voter ID, and stop citizenship confirmation. "Are you a citizenship?" You're not allowed to ask that question, because they want to steal the election.

The radical left knows exactly what they're doing. They're ruthless and it's time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories.

In Fulton County, Republican poll watchers were ejected, in some cases, physically from the room under the false pretense of a pipe burst. Water main burst, everybody leave. Which we now know was a total lie.

Then election officials pull boxes, Democrats, and suitcases of ballots out from under a table. You all saw it on television, totally fraudulent. And illegally scanned them for nearly two hours, totally unsupervised. Tens of thousands of votes. This act coincided with a mysterious vote dump of up to 100,000 votes for Joe Biden, almost none for Trump. Oh, that sounds fair. That was at 1:34 a.m.

The Georgia secretary of state and pathetic governor of Georgia, have reached, although he says I'm a great president. You know, I sort of maybe have to change. He said the other day, "Yes, I do. I disagree with president, but he's been a great president." Good, thanks. Thank you very much.

Because of him and others, you have Brian Kemp. Vote him the hell out of office, please. Well, his rates are so low. You know, his approval rating now, I think it just reached a record low.

They've rejected five separate appeals for an independent and comprehensive audit of signatures in Fulton County. Even without an audit, the number of fraudulent ballots that we've identified across the state is staggering.

Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election.

More than 2,500 ballots were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match incarcerated felons in Georgia prison. People who are not allowed to vote.

More than 4,500 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state's own voter rolls.

Over 18,000 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant, according to the Postal Service.

At least 88,000 ballots in Georgia were cast by people whose registrations were illegally backdated.

Sixty-six thousand votes, each one of these is far more than we need. Sixty-six thousand votes in Georgia were cast by individuals under the legal voting age.

And at least 15,000 ballots were cast by individuals who moved out of the state prior to November 3 election. They say they moved right back. They moved right back. Oh, they moved out, they moved right back. OK. They missed Georgia that much. I do. I love Georgia, but it's a corrupt system.

Despite all of this, the margin in Georgia is only 11,779 votes.

Each and every one of these issues is enough to give us a victory in Georgia, a big beautiful victory. Make no mistake, this election was stolen from you, from me and from the country.

And not a single swing state has conducted a comprehensive audit to remove the illegal ballots. This should absolutely occur in every single contested state before the election is certified.

In the state of Arizona, over 36,000 ballots were illegally cast by non-citizens. Two thousand ballots were returned with no address. More than 22,000 ballots were returned before they were ever supposedly mailed out. They returned, but we haven't mailed them yet.

Eleven thousand six hundred more ballots and votes were counted, more than there were actual voters. You see that? So you have more votes again than you have voters.

One hundred and fifty thousand people registered in Maricopa County after the registration deadline. One hundred and three thousand ballots in the county were sent for electronic adjudication with no Republican observers.

In Clark County, Nevada, the accuracy settings on signature verification machines were purposely lowered before they were used to count over 130,000 ballots.

If you signed your name as Santa Claus, it would go through.

There were also more than 42,000 double votes in Nevada. Over 150,000 people were hurt so badly by what took place. And 1,500 ballots were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Nevada residents who died in 2020 prior to November 3 election. More than 8,000 votes were cast by individuals who had no address and probably didn't live there.

The margin in Nevada is down at a very low number, any of these things would have taken care of the situation. We would have won Nevada, also. Every one of these we're going over, we win.

In Michigan, quickly, the secretary of state, a real great one, flooded the state with unsolicited mail-in ballot applications sent to every person on the rolls in direct violation of state law.

More than 17,000 Michigan ballots were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match people who were deceased.

In Wayne County, that's a great one. That's Detroit. One hundred and seventy-four thousand ballots were counted without being tied to an actual registered voter. Nobody knows where they came from.

Also, in Wayne County, poll watchers observed canvassers rescanning batches of ballots over and over again, up to three or four or five times.

In Detroit, turnout was 139% of registered voters. Think of that. So you had 139% of the people in Detroit voting. This is in Michigan. Detroit, Michigan.

A career employee of the Detroit, City of Detroit, testified under penalty of perjury that she witnessed city workers coaching voters to vote straight Democrat while accompanying them to watch who they voted for. When a Republican came in, they wouldn't talk to him.

The same worker was instructed not to ask for any voter ID and not to attempt to validate any signatures if they were Democrats. She also told to illegally, and was told, backdate ballots received after the deadline and reports that thousands and thousands of ballots were improperly backdated. That's Michigan.

Four witnesses have testified under penalty of perjury that after officials in Detroit announced the last votes had been counted, tens of thousands of additional ballots arrived without required envelopes. Every single one was for a Democrat. I got no votes.

At 6:31 a.m. in the early morning hours after voting had ended, Michigan suddenly reported 147,000 votes. An astounding 94% went to Joe Biden, who campaigned brilliantly from his basement. Only a couple of percentage points went to Trump.

Such gigantic and one-sided vote dumps were only observed in a few swing states and they were observed in the states where it was necessary.

You know what's interesting? President Obama beat Biden in every state other than the swing states where Biden killed them, but the swing states were the ones that mattered.

They're always just enough to push Joe Biden barely into the lead. We were ahead by a lot and within a number of hours we were losing by a little.

In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion Voting Systems. In one Michigan county alone, 6,000 votes were switched from Trump to Biden and the same systems are used in the majority of states in our country.

Senator William Ligon, a great gentleman, chairman of Georgia's senate judiciary subcommittee. Senator Ligon, highly respected, on elections has written a letter describing his concerns with Dominion in Georgia.

He wrote, and I quote, The Dominion Voting Machines employed in Fulton County had an astronomical and astounding 93.67% error rate. It's only wrong 93% of the time in the scanning of ballots requiring a review panel to adjudicate or determine the voter's interest in over 106,000 ballots out of a total of 113,000.

Think of it. You go in and you vote and then they tell people who you supposed to be voting for. They make up whatever they want. Nobody's ever even heard.

They adjudicate your vote. They say, Well, we don't think Trump wants to vote for Trump. We think he wants to vote for Biden. Put it down for Biden.

The national average for such an error rate is far less than 1% and yet you're at 93%. The source of this astronomical error rate must be identified to determine if these machines were set up or destroyed to allow for a third party to disregard the actual ballot cast by the registered voter.

The letter continues. There is clear evidence that tens of thousands of votes were switched from President Trump to former Vice President Biden in several counties in Georgia.

For example, in Bibb County, President Trump was reported to have 29,391 votes at 9:11 p.m. Eastern time, while simultaneously Vice President Joe Biden was reported to have 17,213. Minutes later, just minutes, at the next update, these vote numbers switched with President Trump going way down to 17,000 and Biden going way up to 29,391. And that was very quick, a 12,000 vote switch all in Mr. Biden's favor.

So, I mean, I could go on and on about this fraud that took place in every state, and all of these legislatures want this back. I don't want to do it to you because I love you and it's freezing out here. But I could just go on forever. I can tell you this.

(Audience chants: "We love you.")

So when you hear, when you hear, while there is no evidence to prove any wrongdoing, this is the most fraudulent thing anybody has, this is a criminal enterprise. This is a criminal enterprise. And the press will say, and I'm sure they won't put any of that on there, because that's no good. And you ever see, while there is no evidence to back President Trump's assertion.

I could go on for another hour reading this stuff to you and telling you about it. There's never been anything like it.

Think about it. Detroit had more votes than it had voters. Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than it had more. But you don't have to go any. Between that, I think that's almost better than dead people if you think, right? More votes than they had voters. And many other states also.

It's a disgrace that the United States of America, tens of millions of people, are allowed to go vote without so much as even showing identification.

In no state is there any question or effort made to verify the identity, citizenship, residency or eligibility of the votes cast.

The Republicans have to get tougher. You're not going to have a Republican Party if you don't get tougher. They want to play so straight. They want to play so, sir, yes, the United States. The Constitution doesn't allow me to send them back to the States. Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can't vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules.

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.

It is also widely understood that the voter rolls are crammed full of non-citizens, felons and people who have moved out of state and individuals who are otherwise ineligible to vote. Yet Democrats oppose every effort to clean up their voter rolls. They don't want to clean them up. They're loaded.

And how many people here know other people, that when there are hundreds of thousands and then millions of ballots got sent out, got three, four, five, six, and I heard one, who got seven ballots. And then they say you didn't quite make it, sir.

We won in a landslide. This was a landslide. They said it's not American to challenge the election. This the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world.

You know, you could go third-world countries, but I don't think they had hundreds of thousands of votes and they don't have voters for them. I mean no matter where you go, nobody would think this.

In fact, it's so egregious, it's so bad that a lot of people don't even believe it. It's so crazy that people don't even believe it. It can't be true. So they don't believe it.

This is not just a matter of domestic politics — this is a matter of national security.

So today, in addition to challenging the certification of the election, I'm calling on Congress and the state legislatures to quickly pass sweeping election reforms, and you better do it before we have no country left.

Today is not the end, it's just the beginning.

With your help over the last four years, we built the greatest political movement in the history of our country and nobody even challenges that.

I say that over and over, and I never get challenged by the fakeness, and they challenge almost everything we say.

But our fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There's never been a movement like that.

You look back there all the way to the Washington Monument. It's hard to believe.

We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen again.

But we're going forward. We'll take care of going forward. We've got to take care of going back. Don't let them talk. OK, well, we promised. I've had a lot of people. Sir, you're at 96% for four years. I said I'm not interested right now. I'm interested in right there.

With your help, we will finally pass powerful requirements for voter ID. You need an ID to cash a check. You need an ID to go to a bank, to buy alcohol, to drive a car. Every person should need to show an ID in order to cast your most important thing, a vote.

We will also require proof of American citizenship in order to vote in American elections. We just had a good victory in court on that one, actually.

We will ban ballot harvesting and prohibit the use of unsecured drop boxes to commit rampant fraud. These drop boxes are fraudulent. Therefore, they get disapp — they disappear, and then all of a sudden they show up. It's fraudulent.

We will stop the practice of universal unsolicited mail-in balloting.

We will clean up the voter rolls that ensure that every single person who casts a vote is a citizen of our country, a resident of the state in which they vote and their vote is cast in a lawful and honest manner.

We will restore the vital civic tradition of in-person voting on Election Day so that voters can be fully informed when they make their choice.

We will finally hold big tech accountable. And if these people had courage and guts, they would get rid of Section 230, something that no other company, no other person in America, in the world has.

All of these tech monopolies are going to abuse their power and interfere in our elections, and it has to be stopped. And the Republicans have to get a lot tougher, and so should the Democrats. They should be regulated, investigated, and brought to justice under the fullest extent of the law. They're totally breaking the law.

Together, we will drain the Washington swamp and we will clean up the corruption in our nation's capital. We have done a big job on it, but you think it's easy. It's a dirty business. It's a dirty business. You have a lot of bad people out there.

Despite everything we've been through, looking out all over this country and seeing fantastic crowds. Although this, I think, is our all-time record. I think you have 250,000 people. 250,000.

Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation's future. Well, I have to say, we have to be a little bit careful. That's a nice statement, but we have to be a little careful with that statement.

If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information.

We are the greatest country on Earth and we are headed and were headed in the right direction.

You know, the wall is built. We're doing record numbers at the wall. Now, they want to take down the wall. Let's let everyone flow in. Let's let everybody flow in. We did a great job in the wall. Remember, the wall, they said it could never be done. One of the largest infrastructure projects we've ever had in this country, and it's had a tremendous impact, that we got rid of catch and release. We got rid of all of this stuff that we had to live with.

But now, the caravans, I think Biden's getting in, the caravans are forming again. They want to come in again and rip off our country. Can't let it happen.

As this enormous crowd shows, we have truth and justice on our side. We have a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts. We love our country.

We have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls. Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Our brightest days are before us. Our greatest achievements, still away.

I think one of our great achievements will be election security. Because nobody until I came along had any idea how corrupt our elections were.

And again, most people would stand there at 9 o'clock in the evening and say I want to thank you very much, and they go off to some other life. But I said something's wrong here, something is really wrong, can have happened.

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.

And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.

So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I want to thank you all. God bless you and God Bless America.

Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Yeah, but he said the word "Peaceful" once... Doesn't that Count?? S/

I know, it is pathetic how spin doctors operate.   If the Jan 6 committee were to do an accurate profile of Trump's speech they would put the peaceful language in one column and then list the incendiary column in the next.    The single use of the word 'peacefully' was thoroughly overpowered by Trump's call to arms language (note also the language he used to get his supporters there in the first place).   And, as noted, 'peacefully' appeared in the first third of his speech and was long forgotten by the end.   But in the end, Trump provide this tone:

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Think that was fresh in the minds of his supporters as they marched to the Capitol?

We ought to apply the reasoning of symbolic logic to it. One mention of peaceful to how many mentions of violence? Does not take much to see where that is headed.

But first one must be willing to think critically.

The only one who officially requested assistance from the National Guard was mayor Bowser.

Yeah, more bullshit.  

Speaking on the D.C. radio station  WMAL , Sund said J6 investigators’ interest was limited to a single six-hour Zoom interview, “and it was clear they wanted to get as far away as possible from any institutional failures that occurred that day or anything that put any kind of fingerprints on congressional leadership.”

The ex-police chief also told the radio station that he desperately pleaded for policymakers to deploy the National Guard on the day of the riot . The House sergeant at arms took 71 minutes to approve the dispatching of additional Guard troops while the Capitol was attacked, Sund said. (emphasis mine)

Sund encountered resistance from the Pentagon next, where officials cited concerns about “optics” if National Guard troops were sent to the Capitol. House leadership also complained about the “optics” of Guard reinforcements pre-emptively stationed in the run-up to Jan. 6, Sund added.

“Even when we’re in the middle of battle, I’m being told, ‘No, they’re concerned about optics,'” Sund said. “But they’re sending resources to the generals’ homes to protect their homes.”

thefederalist

What you keep blathering on is a result of the faulty thinking that the J6 committee was unbiased and bipartisan.  It was everything but unbiased and bipartisan.  

Were the high-ranking, connected Republicans who compromised their political futures by giving testimony adverse to Trump acting in a biased and partisan fashion?

Is that mentioned anywhere in my comment?

They place (some folks on NT) so much significance on the one time when the former 'president' said to go in peace which I believe was right at the beginning of the 'rally' and then lied and lied and lied and lied and lied and lied and continued to incite after already inciting them to be there in the first place and then continued to lie and say they had to 'fight like hell or they wouldn't have a country any more' and then lied some more and continued to incite.  

Another feeble deflection.   

You dismiss everything from the J6 committee so I asked if you also dismiss the testimonies of the high-ranking, connected Republicans who compromised their political futures by giving testimony adverse to Trump.

They were emotionally drained at the White House.  That was the end of 'their' day.

JFC

As the former 'president' continues to lie and incite while calling for peace three hours later they are emotionally drained at the White House and their day was over.

'Because nobody, until I came along, had any idea how corrupt our elections are"

[deleted]

10,000 NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS WERE REQUESTED “Jan 6 committee allegedly suppressed testimony showing Trump admin pushed for National Guard presence:

report” "The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative.

Mr. Ornato’s testimony proves what Mr. Meadows has said all along: President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down," Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk said in a statement on Friday.

"The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative. Mr. Ornato’s testimony proves what Mr. Meadows has said all along: President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down," Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk said in a statement on Friday. Ornato’s interview was conducted in January 2022 and attended by Cheney, among other members on the committee. In addition to serving as deputy chief of staff under Trump, Ornato served in the Secret Service for decades.

Jim Weed on X: "10,000 NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS WERE REQUESTED “Jan 6 committee allegedly suppressed testimony showing Trump admin pushed for National Guard presence: report” "The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people… https://t.co/7KnrUb4wvP" / X (twitter.com)

President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down," Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk said in a statement on Friday.

Turned down by whom?

Turned down by whom?

You are not going to get away with it again. You take that part up with Barry Loudermilk.

I made my point.

I made my point.

Just what was that point again? That Donald Trump is guilty of several factual and substantiated claims? And that you are voting for a Fraud?

Turned down by whom?

And the "offer" was made to protect himself and his supporters at the rally.

According to the suspect testimony of Mr. Ornato, it was Washington D.C. Mayor Bowser who turned down the "offer" of up to 10,000 troops when asked by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

He is either badly mistaken or lying.  Mayor Bowser has no authority over a deployment of the National Guard.  DC’s Guard troop strength was the 1,100 at that time,  and not all were deployable.  The testimony has Trump idly speculating about Guard support so he and his followers would be safe marching from the Ellipse to the Capitol.

Pelosi doesn’t control Guard deployments either.

There was no serious offer to anyone, no planing, no alert status, no riot gear equipping, just some idle presidential speculation,

I agree, it was just a passing question to the mayor with a made up number from Trump.

It has been a staple of MAGA doctrine since 2021  that Nancy Pelosi turned down Trump's gracious offer of 10,000 troops. I doubt if they'll be changing their minds at this late date.

I think that it started in Feb 2021 when Meadows lied on Fox News to Hannity: 

“Don’t forget, President Trump requested increased National Guard support in the days leading up to January 6. The request was rejected — by Pelosi, by congressional leaders, including requests, by the way, from the Capitol Police chief.”

“What we also know is that President Trump wanted to make sure that the people that came, that there was a safe environment for that kind of assembly. And I’ve said that publicly before — the 10,000 National Guard troops that he wanted to make sure that everything was safe and secure. … Obviously having those National Guards available, actually the reason they were able to respond when they did, was because President Trump had actually put them on alert.”

On a Feb Sunday Fox News show:

 “As many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the secretary of defense. That was a direct order from President Trump.”

Trump and his inner circle know how to Tweet but not give ‘direct orders’.

You take that part up with Barry Loudermilk.

OK.

According to Loudermilk:

“The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative,"   said Chairman Loudermilk.  "Mr. Ornato's testimony proves what Mr. Meadows has said all along, President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down.

Does it? I don't think so. 

23 Q Yeah. And, you know, on that point, we also understand that the
24 President, in that January 4th dining room meeting, said -- or asked whether 10,000
25 National Guard troops could be deployed on January 6th. Were you aware of that?
78
1 A I was not aware of that.
2 Q Well, then, going back to the traveling to the Capitol, between the 4th and
3 the 6th, so the time that you said you discussed it with Max Miller the morning of the 4th,
4 did it come up again as a topic of discussion for you prior to the 6th? So later on the 4th
5 or at any point on the 5th?
6 A No, it never came -- I never heard about it again.
7 Q When it comes to the National Guard statement about having 10,000 troops
8 or any other number of troops, do you recall any discussion prior to the 6th about
9 whether and how many National Guard troops to deploy on January 6th?
10 A I do recall a conversation, I believe, it was with Mr. Meadows and the mayor,
11 Mayor Bowser. I remember he had -- he was on the phone with her, and we -- I had
12 walked in for something, and I was there, and he was on the phone with her and wanted
13 to make sure she had everything that she needed. Because I think it was the concern of
14 anti and pro groups clashing is what I recall. And not anywhere near the Capitol, this
15 was just out on the mall area or at the event; and wanted to know if she need any more
16 guardsmen. And I remember the number 10,000 coming up of, you know, the President
17 wants to make sure that you have enough. You know, he is willing to ask for 10,000. I
18 remember that number. Now that you said it, it reminded me of it. And that she was
19 all set. She had, I think it was like 350 or so for intersection control and those types of
20 thing not in the law enforcement capacity at the time. And then that's the only thing I
21 recall with that number 10,000 National Guard guardsmen. 

Loudermilk said on the Committee on House Administration web page:

A January 6 committee staffer asked Ornato, “When it comes to the National Guard statement about having 10,000 troops or any other number of troops, do you recall any discussion prior to the 6th about whether and how many National Guard troops to deploy on January 6th?”  Ornato surprised the committee by noting he did recall a conversation between Meadows and Bowser: “He was on the phone with her and wanted to make sure she had everything that she needed,” Ornato told investigators.

Surprised the committee? Maybe because he consistently said "I can't recall" over things like seeing a report that there were people with flak vests and plastic riot shields and tactical helmets and mace and metal pipes that wouldn't go through the magnetometers because they knew their implements of destruction would be confiscated. Or the reports that he forwarded on up to Engles and Meadows. Or the conversations that he had with multiple people that he suddenly did not have any recollection of. But the one conversation that he overheard one side of. Oh, yeah! He can remember that and know who was on the other end of the call. 
 

Meadows “wanted to know if she need any more guardsmen,” Ornato testified. “And I remember the number 10,000 coming up of, you know, ‘ The president wants to make sure that you have enough.’ You know, ‘He is willing to ask for 10,000. ’ I remember that number. Now that you said it, it reminded me of it. And that she was all set. She had, I think it was like 350 or so for intersection control, and those types of things not in the law enforcement capacity at the time.”  Ornato was correct.   Bowser  declined the offer , asking only for a few hundred National Guard and requiring them to serve in a  very limited capacity . 

Because the amount of law enforcement in total was great enough for crowds of up to 1,000,000 people, according to Appendix 1. Indeed, the decision was not hers alone, but General Mark Milley was also in on it. Everyone was worried that it might look like something was amiss (Hmmmmmm... I wonder what that could be. Oh, yeah. Trump taking over .) The decision was made to keep the NG away from the event itself and let the MPD and other policing agencies like the Park Police, Secret Service, and the Capitol Police do their jobs. I recall a number of 6 thousand to 8 thousand officers being on duty that day. 

From the testimony (page 80) 

6 Q Okay. So if we go down to the next page of that exhibit, still exhibit 8, you
7 see at the top, excuse me, down at the bottom relevant to what you just discussed, at
8 8:09 p.m. on the 4th, Ms. Pierson texted Mr. Miller a link to a political article about Mayor
9 Bowser requesting a certain number of National Guard troops be deployed on the 6th?
10 A Yes.
11 Q And if we continue on the third page of this exhibit, Mr. Miller uses some
12 colorful language in response to seeing the article. But his next comment is, if you stay
13 there, "but chief had already had said no for days." We understand him to be referring
14 to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Is that how he would be referred to?
15 A Ah, yes.
16 Q Okay. And then when he said, "the Chief had already said no for days," we
17 understand that to be a reference to no to the idea of having National Guard troops
18 deployed. And, again, he is saying for days. And this is on January 4th and
19 understanding you had been on leave? 20 A Right.

So, not only was General Mark Milley against having the troops, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was against it also. Why? Because what the President actually wanted the troops for was to walk with him down to the Capitol. Gosh, Trump rates right up there with his autocratic buddies having military parades as a demonstration of strength. It is all in the report. You might have a better time if you had read the report. 

Bowser’s decision to decline help from the White House did not end the Trump team’s efforts to secure troops ahead of the protest. When the D.C. mayor declined Trump’s offer of 10,000 troops,   Ornato said the White House requested a “quick reaction force” out of the Defense Department in case it was needed.

From the testimony (page 87):

5 Q Did you learn of any of the planning or coordinating that was going on to
6 prepare for January 6th?
7 A The only thing I remember with DOD and the National Guard was even
8 though the Mayor didn't want any more National Guard in D.C., that a request was made
9 to have kind of a, lack of better term, a quick reaction force out at Joint Base Andrews
10 being that it was a military installation. I remember Chief Meadows talking to DOD
11 about that, I believe, I remember Chief Meadows letting me know that, Hey, there was
12 going to be National Guard that's going to be at Joint Base Andrews in case they're going
13 to need some more, we're going to -- the Mayor would need any, we're going to make
14 sure they're out there.
15 Q Do you think that ask was made for QRF based on the crowd expectation,
16 the size?
17 A That was what my assumption was based upon all the groups that were
18 coming in and attending. And, again, the crowd sizes were, you know, the organizers
19 were saying, you know, there may be 50,000 here. So that's where it started, I think, to
20 scare the Chief a little bit of how many people were coming in for this event, and wanted
21 to make sure that they would be able to bring in National Guard if needed for this size of
22 this many people inside D.C.
23 Q Was it your sense that that request, that QRF request was made, had been
24 previously made, or that had been made by Chief Meadows? 25 A My assumption was it was made by Chief Meadows. I don't know who else would have

Wow, he did know something. That is a really good thing because that was his job!

Once the Capitol was breached, the Trump White House pushed for immediate help from Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and grew frustrated at the slow deployment of that help,   according to the testimony .  “So then I remember the chief saying, ‘Hey, I’m calling secretary of defense to get that [quick reaction force] in here,” Ornato said. Later he said, “And then I remember the chief telling Miller, ‘Get them in here, get them in here to secure the Capitol now.'”

Yes, they were all looking at what was happening and saying, "Trump has to stop this". To be fair, it was the Trump White House (aka all of the senior level staff) and not the President himself. The tacit admission of all involved was Trump could stop it. Here is why it took so long.

Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops.   In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now.

The White House did communicate it's desire for 10,000 National Guard troops, to other members of the administration.  The White House and members of the administration also quashed that ask. They did not ask Pelosi even though the President claims he did. 

The January 6th insurrection resulted from a wannabe strongman playing at being a dictator. Yet still, the entirety of the Republican party is in deep denial of these facts that prove how loathsome Donald Trump was, is, and will continue to be because they are drunk on the illusory power that his name conjures.

Well, according to Appendix 1 of the Report, it is a little more convoluted than that:

On December 19, 2020, President Trump tweeted, “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there! Will be wild!” From that day forward, a rookie DC intelligence analyst saw a tenfold uptick in violent rhetoric targeting Congress and law enforcement. 31   Right-wing groups were sharing histories of violence and some not traditionally aligned had begun coordinating their efforts.   32   The analyst’s report reached more senior DC leadership, including, eleven days later, Mayor Bowser. 33   In the course of the Committee’s investigation, it received and reviewed a significant number of documents indicating that certain intelligence and law enforcement agencies understood that violence was possible or even likely on January 6th. The Committee received many of those materials from the U.S. Secret Service, but also from other agencies as well.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020, the day after the briefing, Mayor Bowser sent a letter to Major General Walker requesting Guard assistance for January 5 and 6, 2021. 34   A second letter specified the District’s request as limited to two forms of assistance: crowd management at Metro stations and blocking vehicles at traffic posts. It did not request help with potential civil disturbance. 35

General Piatt viewed the “limited request” 36   as a “pretty good, tailored mission,” that was “not vague.” 37   General James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, called the request appropriately “restricted” 38   with “a very low military signature.” 39

According to testimony by Defense Department witnesses, after a summer of perceived overreach, military leadership was grateful for the delineated parameters set by the city itself.

The substance of the request—limited to traffic and crowd control “so they could have more police officers to do police functions” 40 —was not seen as narrow by District officials. “I would say it’s a specific request,” Chief of DC Police (Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”)) Robert Contee said. 41   “[L]eave the unlawful stuff, leave that to the police to deal with.” 42   Mayor Bowser said: “I don’t know any law enforcement person who would suggest that urban disturbances aren’t best handled by the police.” 43

“Civil disturbance was not something we requested at that time. Mostly also because the vast majority of the, if not all, of the permitted protests were taking place on Federal lands,” said Director of the DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Christopher Rodriguez. 44   The District had no jurisdiction. “Mayor Bowser cannot make a request on behalf of the White House or on behalf of the Capitol for U.S. Capitol—for . . . DC National Guardsmen to deploy to those two entities. She can’t,” Chief Contee said. 45   At this time, it was well known that President Trump had planned a speech and rally on “Federal lands”—on the Ellipse south of the White House. It was not widely known that President Trump intended to “spontaneously” instruct the tens of thousands of supporters at that Ellipse rally to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. 46

And the "offer" was made to protect himself and his supporters at the rally.

Protect? Ehhh. I think that Trump wanted his own little Army. Now that is speculation.

I think the Army brass agreed with you.

Yes.

I'm impressed Drinker, as i am also a DRINKER, but not of the Kool Aid a few here have been overserved. Nice to see you explaining, in rather convincing fashion i might add, so i did, point after point that Vic and cump could not, all though they did try, Trump. Without convictions, due to derelictions of duty smeared buy the bought whom apparently can't be taught what Trump has wrought aboutisms, as you TiG and Thomas have thoroughly obliterated the arguments that they still refuse to concede, just like Trump, and beings you tend to be a tad more from the 'right', then down the center as some, i'll again mention,

nicely done.

And I am glad they did.

Where are the googlers?

Say it ain't so!

From pages 533-534, J6 Report:

President Trump wanted to personally accompany his supporters on the march from the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol. During a January 4th meeting with staffers and event organizer Katrina Pierson, President Trump emphasized his desire to march with his supporters.  “Well, I should walk with the people,” Pierson recalled President Trump saying.  Though Pierson said that she did not take him “seriously,” she knew that “he would absolutely want to be with the people.  ”Pierson pointed out that President Trump “did the drive-by the first time and the flyover the second time”—a “BE THERE, WILL BE WILD!”   reference to the November and December 2020 protests in Washington, DC.  During these previous events, President Trump made cameo appearances to fire up his supporters. Now, as January 6th approached, the President again wanted to be there, on the ground, as his supporters marched on the U.S. Capitol.

The President’s advisors tried to talk him out of it. White House Senior Advisor Max Miller “shot it down immediately” because of concerns about the President’s safety.  Pierson agreed.  But President Trump was persistent, and he floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats  by leftwing counter-protestors. Miller again rejected the President’s idea, saying that the National Guard was not necessary for the event. Miller testified that there was no further conversation on the matter.   After the meeting, Miller texted Pierson, “Just glad we killed the national guard and a procession .”   That is,  President Trump briefly considered having the National Guard oversee his procession to the U.S. Capitol . The President did not order the National Guard to protect the U.S. Capitol, or to secure the joint session proceedings.

From page 702:

During the January 3rd and 4th calls, General Milley, according to Donoghue, noted that “[t]here should be plenty of police forces available  without using Federal military troops, ” so  he was adamant that no active duty troops would be deployed on January 6th .

From pages 729-730:

Fears of Politicizing the Military in an Antidemocratic Manner . Both Acting Secretary Miller and Secretary McCarthy were sensitive to the sight of troops near the site of the Congressional certification of electoral votes, because of President Trump’s previous expression of interest in using Federal troops in civilian situations. Again, Attorney General Barr and other members of the Trump Administration had resisted President Trump’s desire to deploy such troops. Secretary Esper said it “tended to be the case . . . that the President was inclined to use the military,” contrary to longstanding principles of reserving the armed forces as a last resort.70 According to his testimony, Acting Secretary Miller’s express first priority—after being installed with just two months left in the Trump administration—was “to make every effort to return the Department of Defense to a nonpoliticized entity,” because previously, “the Department was being showcased too much.”71In testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on May 12, 2021, he cited “fears that the President would invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an antidemocratic manner” as shaping his thinking.72“No such thing was going to occur on my watch,” he wrote,73later adding that “if I would have put troops on Capitol Hill” before the attack and without a request from civil authorities, “that would have been seen as extremely provocative, if not supporting this crazy narrative that the military was going to try to overturn the election.”74 Secretary McCarthy felt similar pressure. He had been taken aback when—as he was walking down the Pentagon’s hallways—“one of the most seasoned reporters” asked him whether the Army was planning to seize ballot boxes.75It was “an incredibly tense period,” according to Secretary McCarthy.76As our investigation has demonstrated, President Trump had considered proposals from Lt. General (ret.) Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and others that troops be utilized to seize ballot boxes in certain parts of the country . On December 18, 2020—the same day as the contentious White House meeting with Flynn and others,—Secretary McCarthy issued a statement, “mirror[ing] what General Milley said about a month before,”77reiterating that “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”78Given the heat of the rhetoric, he thought, “[I]f we don't say anything, it's going to scare people.” 79Secretary McCarthy told the Select Committee he thought he would be fired after publicly stating that the military would not assist in a coup.80General McConville, who signed the statement alongside Secretary McCarthy’s signature,81linked their words directly to the Ninth Street limitation: “[T]here was no plan to put any military anywhere near the Capitol because of what we had said, the military has no role in determining the outcome of elections .”82 On January 1st, Executive Officer to Secretary McCarthy Colonel John Lubas wrote in an internal email that the Secretary “wants to clearly communicate that this request is NOT from the White House.”83The email noted that the Secretary wanted to “aggressively message” that the request had come from District officials, not the President.84 “We wanted everybody to know that, because it would create confusion and even more tension of having soldiers on the street without a request and that they be near the Capitol with certification of an election, a contested election,” Secretary McCarthy said.85

govinfo

First of all, Vic, your quoted use of "critical thinkers" is obvious intentional mocking.   But worse, your mocking is based on yet another leap by you to take tidbits and claims and desperately spin them into hard-cold fact.

Here is an example of actual critical thinking.    Let's go back to Jan, 2023 and note the reporting by the Post on this matter:   washingtonpost

The report first notes Trump's claim:

“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C.”

It then debunks the claim based on the (then) newly released report from the Jan 6 committee:

Trump and his defenders have repeatedly claimed that the violence at the Capitol two years ago would have been prevented if only his order for 10,000 troops had been heeded . We have explored this claim twice before and debunked it , each time awarding Four Pinocchios.

But now the Jan. 6 committee has released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provide new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.

Trump, in his post, says he made a “recommendation for troops” and that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) failed to act on it. But the evidence shows Trump did not issue any formal request — so there was nothing for Pelosi to heed. The committee report says it found “no evidence” to support the claim that he ordered 10,000 troops.

Moreover, the committee said that when he referenced so many troops, it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol. He “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counterprotesters,” the report said.

The report says that Trump brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order. Here’s what we know now about his statements at the time:

Jan. 3 meeting with acting defense secretary Christopher Miller

At the end of a meeting with military officials concerning a national security threat, Trump asked “in passing” about preparations for Jan. 6, when electoral votes certifying Joe Biden as the new president would be counted in Congress, the report says. Before the vote, Trump planned a speech to supporters on the National Mall.

Miller, in his interview , said he may have conflated this meeting with a phone call two days later. He had originally told Vanity Fair that the meeting — in which a 10,000-troop figure was discussed — took place on Jan. 5. But he now believes the number came up in a Jan. 5 phone call, not the Jan. 3 meeting. “We didn’t talk about size” on Jan. 3, Miller told investigators. “It was more, ‘What was the Department of Defense’s plan for support to law enforcement.’ ”

“Never once did I hear the president relative to the 6th specify the number of troops, 10,000 or any other number, for that matter,” said Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also attended the meeting.

Jan. 4 meeting with Pierson

During a meeting with Katrina Pierson, who was organizing Trump’s rally on the Mall, the president expressed a desire to march with his supporters to the Capitol, she told investigators .

White House senior adviser Max Miller said he “shot it down immediately” because of concerns for Trump’s safety. Trump then suggested 10,000 National Guardsmen could protect him and his supporters — a figure that Pierson recorded. “I opened my folder and wrote down 10,000 National Guard, closed my folder again,” she recalled. (Miller did not recall the number.)

Miller replied: “We should only call the Guard if we expect a problem.”

First of all you should address that comment to me.

Second of all, I don't like when people deny obvious facts and then try and deflect with an interpretation of events.


Trump did not offer 10,000 National Guard troops to Nancy Pelosi and Pelosi did not (obviously) turn them down.

And that was never my claim. Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion. We can't get you to admit that.


Critical thinking litmus test one:

Should include HONESTY.

[deleted]

That seems to be the argument they want me to make.

It is really a very low bar. The Jan 6th committee hid testimony from the incoming House members.

There are a few here who refuse to accept facts.

And that was never my claim. Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion. We can't get you to admit that.

And you think that comprises total exoneration for trump.  That is pathetic.

The vast majority of the fact pattern relating to the J6 indictments of trump  have nothing to do with whether or not he suggested something about security at the capitol.

And you think that comprises total exoneration for trump.

No I don't. I simply want to hear one of you accept the fact that testimony was hidden by the Jan 6th committee. That is all I'm asking for.

And you think that comprises total exoneration for trump.  That is pathetic.

In what post did he convey that to you, or are you making it up?

if you can't produce a quote or even a post number, THAT is what would be considered pathetic.

[deleted]

Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion

Trump made the suggestion for his and the protestors security, not the Capital.  Apparently no one on his staff took any action to make this happen.

Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion.

You are still trying to spin this into "Trump really did act responsibly on Jan 6th".    That is a lie. 

And that was never my claim. Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion. We can't get you to admit that.

So you did not read what I wrote:   

TiG@9 ☞ Trump floated the idea of using the National Guard to protect himself and his supporters .  

How is it possible that you do not recognize me noting that Trump made this note?    Further:

TiG@9 ☞  And if you actually read the transcript  from the Jan 6th committee referenced deep in your link, you will see that Trump was (per Ornato 's recollection) asking the Mayor of D.C. (Bowser) if she needed National Guard support prior to the event.   And the reasoning, by Trump, was the concern over his opponents clashing with his supporters.

Again, I am stating that Trump asked Bowser if she needed help.     How is it that you cannot see that?

And in the quoted reporting from the Post, I specifically highlighted passages such as this:

TiG@9 ☞ He “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counterprotesters,” the report said.

The irony of you engaging in dishonesty to suggest I was dishonest.

Also on your specific claim (which I clearly acknowledged @9 as per above):

"Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion."

So what?   Trump made all sorts of comments.   That fact that Trump made a suggestion for security does not match with what he claimed.   Trump did NOT, as a point of fact, offer National Guard to Pelosi.   That is what he claimed.   His claim was a lie.   Further, Trump did not offer security for the Capitol building even though he planned to have his supporters march to the Capitol on Jan 6th.    Further, Trump did not act to prevent the insurrection violence until it well after Congress had been disrupted by his supporters occupying the building.   And as a cherry on top, during the middle of the insurrection, Trump added fuel to the fire by tweeting how Pence had failed them.

Trump made the suggestion for his and the protestors security, not the Capital. 

That is your interpretation.

Admit the facts.

Trump made the suggestion for his and the protestors security,

That doesn't make sense. Protection from what? And I don't think that is a legit request and I think it wouldn't have been carried out had that been the case.

Trump did make a suggestion for security during a contingency discussion.

His suggestion is on pages 533-534 in the J6 Report.

So what?

Testimony was hidden by a Committee so that incoming members wouldn't see it.

THAT"S WHAT!

Unbelievable.   No matter how detailed the response (to the actual transcript) all you can do is claim that others are being dishonest.   It is equivalent to nuh'uh.  

Do you think this clearly evasive tactic will persuade anyone?

Do you think this clearly evasive tactic will persuade anyone?

probably just as much as denying answers have been given convinces anyone of anything, or arguing what hasn't been claimed does.

"Weeks after Republicans reclaimed the House in 2022, then-GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a  letter  to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, to “preserve all records collected and transcripts of testimony taken during your investigation.” Loudermilk’s investigators, however, found that Thompson’s committee deleted troves of information, including “hundreds of video recordings.”

Testimony was hidden by a Committee so that incoming members wouldn't see it.

There is nothing of value to hide, Vic.   You are acting as though there is some smoking gun here.   Trump's lies are not corroborated.   There is nothing here. 

This is just more partisan spin that is easily debunked by the actual testimony.

Do you not realize that you are penning lies?   Read @9.   I am not denying anything.   Read @9.1.8 where I prove it in detail.

Either read what I wrote and honestly comment or cease making your false claims about me.

Do you think this clearly evasive tactic will persuade anyone?

I think your refusal to admit that records and transcripts were not preserved will persuade any rational human being.

Do you not realize that you are penning lies? 

I guess this is where the conversation ends.

You are acting as though there is some smoking gun here.

Nothing new there. The conservatives here have been searching for a 'smoking gun' that will help defend trump ever since he got into trouble

probably just as much as denying answers have been given convinces anyone of anything, or arguing what hasn't been claimed does.

THERE is what I ACTUALLY wrote.

[deleted]

I guess this is where the conversation ends.

Always the same, claim the other side lies, get called out on it, deflect or ignore.

[deleted]

Either read what I wrote and honestly comment or cease making your false claims about me.

What I wrote is 100% true.

[deleted]

So now your argument is nothing more than a claim that not all records and transcripts were not preserved by the Jan 6 committee.

We are off Trump entirely and now you are simply criticizing the Jan 6 committee for failing to keep every record.   You have no argument that the committee intentionally hid anything that would exonerate Trump.   You just claim that information is missing.

Just keep moving that goalpost, Vic.

On this specific question,  I am aware that the Jan 6 committee ostensibly deleted over 100 documents.   I do not know the degree to which this is true, but I am certainly not denying it.   And unlike you, I do not engage in conspiracy theory and leap to the conclusion of 'ahah ... this is the part that shows Trump is innocent of wrongdoing and the Jan 6 committee was a bunch of lies'.    (Ridiculous)

What matters is if deleted documents contain information that would exonerate Trump.   So if you have this information, provide it.   Just claiming that the committee deleted documents does not mean anything in itself.

I guess this is where the conversation ends.

What conversation?   You made a claim.   I thoroughly debunked it.   Your rebuttals have been nothing more than nuh'uh.

The conversation ended when you failed to even attempt to show where I was wrong in my rebuttal.

I heard yesterday that some transcripts from the J6 committee, including  the one from Tony Ornato, were not released with all the others because the committee was asked by Homeland Security to not release those particular transcripts for national security reasons. So it may not be Liz Cheney's doing it all but I don't really know the details of something that I just heard on television news and haven't looked into.

President Trump wanted to personally accompany his supporters on the march from the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol. During a January 4th meeting with staffers and event organizer Katrina Pierson, President Trump emphasized his desire to march with his supporters.  “Well, I should walk with the people,” Pierson recalled President Trump saying.  Though Pierson said that she did not take him “seriously,” she knew that “he would absolutely want to be with the people.  ”Pierson pointed out that President Trump “did the drive-by the first time and the flyover the second time”—a “BE THERE, WILL BE WILD!”   reference to the November and December 2020 protests in Washington, DC.  During these previous events, President Trump made cameo appearances to fire up his supporters. Now, as January 6th approached, the President again wanted to be there, on the ground, as his supporters marched on the U.S. Capitol.

The President’s advisors tried to talk him out of it. White House Senior Advisor Max Miller “shot it down immediately” because of concerns about the President’s safety.  Pierson agreed.  But President Trump was persistent, and he floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats  by leftwing counter-protestors. Miller again rejected the President’s idea, saying that the National Guard was not necessary for the event. Miller testified that there was no further conversation on the matter.   After the meeting, Miller texted Pierson, “Just glad we killed the national guard and a procession .”   That is,  President Trump briefly considered having the National Guard oversee his procession to the U.S. Capitol 

Pages 533-534

You can't plan and deploy 10,000 troops on a 24 hour notice.

When they fail, they just keep digging in deeper.

Which is pretty much always

Stop already

No, congressman did not say J6 panel destroyed records | Fact check (usatoday.com)

An Aug. 9 Facebook post ( direct link ,   archive link ) shows clips of several members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Now that the J6 Unselect Committee has been caught destroying their records, let’s see what they said in their own words about destroying evidence during their made-for-TV show trial of President Trump,” reads part of the post.

It was shared more than 300 times in 12 days. Similar versions of the claim have been shared on other social media platforms   by former President   Donald Trump   and by   Rep. Lauren Boebert , a Colorado Republican....

Our rating: False

The Republican congressman overseeing the investigation into the committee’s work has not said any records were destroyed, and there have been no reputable reports of such destruction. What Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia did say is that some video recordings are missing, and he does not know what happened to them.

Committee provided transcripts of some interviews, depositions

The issue centers on   the whereabouts   of some video recordings   of interviews and depositions from   the committee’s investigation   into the riot at the Capitol   on Jan. 6, 2021. The committee   issued its final report in December 2022   before it disbanded.

Loudermilk and   Rep. Bennie Thompson , the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the Jan. 6 committee, traded letters in June and July.

Loudermilk wrote   that some recordings were not archived or transferred to the Committee on House Administration. Written transcripts of them were provided, however.

House Rule VII   outlines the requirements for preserving House records at the end of each two-year term, and   a footnote to Thompson’s response to Loudermilk   outlines why Thompson says those written transcripts comply with that rule.

The committee was not obligated to archive all video recordings of interviews or depositions that were transcribed, he wrote. He cited guidance from the House clerk’s office that says the information contained in a document – and not necessarily that document’s format – make it a permanent record.

Because those interviews and depositions were transcribed by “nonpartisan, professional official reporters” and were reviewed for errors by both the witnesses and committee staff, those transcripts qualify as the official, permanent records and follow House rules for record-keeping, he wrote.

Nowhere in the letter does Loudermilk say the recordings were destroyed. There are no reputable news reports that he made that claim and no evidence of the destruction of the records.

“Whether the missing information has been destroyed, was sent to other entities or is still in the possession of members of Congress from the select committee is uncertain at this time,” Loudermilk said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY.

Adam Comis, a spokesperson for the   Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee , called the claim in question “very much false.” Thompson is the ranking member of that panel.

USA TODAY also reached out to the social media users who shared the claim but did not immediately receive responses.

Just another conspiracy theory

or as another member put it, "playing words with friends"

or what the people convinced of conspiracies hear

as opposed to what everyone else hears.

There are a few here who refuse to accept facts.

Noted.

Testimony was hidden by a Committee so that incoming members wouldn't see it.

Prove that it was hidden so incoming members could not see it. 

I don't think that you can.  

I did.

No, you did not.

I posted 3 articles on it. It isn't even breaking news anymore.

Just because you post an article making a claim does not make the claim true.

Testimony was hidden by a Committee so that incoming members wouldn't see it.

To back your assertion, you have to prove that the evidence was knowingly (show intent) hidden to be beyond the reach of new members. Loudermilk is not credible.  What I am looking for is an independent verification from the National Archives or a trusted third party, not the words of a known liar.

House Republicans release report seeking to undermine Jan. 6 committee and star witness

No matter how the MAGA handlers try, they cannot break the main thrust of the January 6th committee's findings. They quibble about whether Donald Trump offered 10,000 troops to Pelosi or Bowser, whether he grabbed the stearing wheel, etc. then stretch those claims to try and discount the whole report. What is tragic is that I doubt any of these people with misplaced alliegences have actually read the report. If they had, I don't think that they would be posting half of the bullshit that passes as news on this site because they would realize the depths of the dishonesty they promulgate.

Just because you post an article making a claim does not make the claim true.

Just take a look at post 10.1

I rest my case.

How on Earth does my @10.1 comment help your claim?

Just stating "I rest my case" does not mean you even made a cogent argument, much less prevailed.

You have yet to prove anything. You claimed:

Testimony was hidden by a Committee so that incoming members wouldn't see it.

As of yet, there is zero evidence that it was purposefully hidden so that people could not find it.

Evidence that some of the testimony was referred to different agencies due to security and privacy concerns does exist. 

As far as the articles that you posted, they are like a circular reference, each one referring to the other. This is usually indicative of somebody who is not being completely honest.

Hey Vic, have you read the report ?

Just stating "I rest my case" does not mean you even made a cogent argument, much less prevailed.

on the basis of his approval of the Eastman memo alone Trump is not fit to be president of the United states or even a dog catcher in a local town. But even the Eastman memo is only part of the massive evidence that trump tried to overthrow the legitimate results of the 2020 election. Most of the members here that dispute this have no idea what is in the report because they deliberately shielded themselves from the content of the report

Updated: Liz Cheney sat in interview with Secret Service driver who denied story Trump tried to commandeer presidential limo on Jan. 6 but did not include in final report.

If true, so what?    Trump trying to commandeer the limo is not a wrongdoing.   There would be no charge.   It at best goes to show his character.  

This is a trivial detail.   What is NOT trivial is that Trump incited his supporters who then violently broke and entered the Capitol to disrupt the working of Congress and Trump fueled the fire by tweeting about Pence and did not act to stop his supporters until hours later ... after much pressing to do so from friends, family, and advisors.

Whether or not Trump put his hand on the limo steering wheel or the driver is meaningless.

I agree, so what?

Whether or not Trump put his hand on the limo steering wheel or the driver is meaningless.

amen.

Whether or not Trump put his hand on the limo steering wheel or the driver is meaningless.

Really?

That is what you're going with now?

Do you not remember the sheer fury of the left when the story first broke?

And now it doesn't matter at all?

LMMFAO!

Do you not remember the sheer fury of the left when the story first broke?

I do not remember that as being anything close to the main news.   This came out as a minor part of the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.   This factoid was covered by the AP, Reuters, etc.   Probably because it was news ... an allegation of absurdly irrational behavior by a sitting PotUS.

But I do not recall 'the left' treating this as substantial.   What was substantial was her testimony of Trump refusing to act during the insurrection.   And of his asking that the security measures be removed for the rally because his supporters are not here to hurt him.

Trump acting like a petulant brat is not wrongdoing.   The PotUS sitting on his butt watching the Capitol being broken into and refusing to act to stop it in spite of pleadings from his family, friends, staff, and others is the wrongdoing.

[deleted]

LMMFAO!

The PotUS sitting on his butt watching the Capitol being broken into and refusing to act to stop it in spite of pleadings from his family, friends, staff, and others is the wrongdoing.

Liz Cheney described it as the most egregious dereliction of duty in our nation's history

if I am remembering correctly, I am pretty sure you had PLENTY to say about the incident at the time, so imagine my surprise now you don't seem to care at all about it!

Liz Cheney described it as the most egregious dereliction of duty in our nation's history

Yeah, she is known for histrionics and exaggeration!

But I do not recall 'the left' treating this as substantial.

The left not only treats anything Donald as as substantial but as a bombshell, hair on fire, sky is falling, constitutional crisis, assault on democracy.  

You are correct, at least 3 cycles of Orange man bad.

Liz Cheney described it as the most egregious dereliction of duty in our nation's history

Worse than Watergate?

But, but, but - he seeks immunity - even for 'acts that cross the line'

The left not only treats anything Donald as as substantial but as a bombshell, hair on fire, sky is falling, constitutional crisis, assault on democracy.  

Trump is their LIFE!

You are correct, at least 3 cycles of Orange man bad.

I fear it will be many more cycles.

Worse than Watergate?

Worse than anything in history!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do not remember that as being anything close to the main news.

Well, I DO!

Very odd since the news that was coming out at that time was Trump's refusal to act while his supporters were breaking and entering the Capitol.

Trump's alleged move to the steering wheel is nothing compared to his inaction.   It is also nothing compared to the incitement of his supporters that preceded it.

Thus your 'memory' does not make logical sense.

It makes perfect sense despite your protestations.

I remember how liberals fell over themselves about the whole steering wheel thing even if others don't.

I can't pretend I don't remember it.

Trump tried to take wheel of limo from SS

About 10,800 results

remember how liberals fell over themselves about the whole steering wheel thing even if others don't.

Similar to countless other stories. They go into hysterics over an allegation for a week and when it gets debunked later on they pretend they never cared about the story in the first place.

Can't say your post is anything other than 100% spot on and true.

[deleted]

True. Once it passes some critical mass of belief, no amount of evidence will ever cause them to stop regurgitating it. 

Trump tried to take wheel of limo from SS

I noted that this was picked up by the AP, Reuters, etc.   That means, in case you are not aware of how the media works, this was covered by most of the media.

It was a minor item that was widely broadcast.   You are aware that minor shit like this is widely broadcast nowadays ... to fill the 24 hour news slot.

As I stated, I do not recall this being MAIN news.   There are plenty of minor items that get a broad coverage and then disappear.   This was one of them.   What is far more important, as I noted, was Trump's actions pursuant to and in response to the insurrection.   That, Texan, is MAIN news.

In short, (as I noted upfront), trying to grab a steering wheel (if true) is not a wrongdoing.

Inciting supporters who then engaged in an insurrection of the Capitol and disrupting Congress in session and then letting this fester for hours IS a wrongdoing ... a major one at that.

I noted that this was picked up by the AP, Reuters, etc.  

Yes, that is indicated by the links in my post.

That means, in case you are not aware of how the media works, this was covered by most of the media.

Well, gee, thanks for that explanation. I had no earthly idea whatsoever how anything as complicated as the media works!.........../s

As I stated, I do not recall this being MAIN news. 

As I stated, I DO.

I also remember people having conniption fits over it right here on this very site!

In Feb 2021, on Fox News, Meadows said, "As many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the secretary of defense. That was a direct order from President Trump.”  We now know that was a lie.  To get to 10,000 troops, you need the DC Guard, the entire VA guard and most of the Maryland Guard. 

Thank you for persistently posting the facts about the Guard, their numbers and  their chain of command.

I agree with SP, and will add textbook flanking maneuver. impressive and hilarious.

I agree.  I'm quite impressed as well.  Quite well done.

It turns out that members of the partisan Jan 6th Committee suppressed evidence that President Donald Trump requested National Guard troops for the Jan 6th rally at the capital [sic].

In addition to my rebuttal (@9 and elsewhere) of the above spin (did not suppress, did not request, not for the Capitol) which attempts to create an optic that Trump tried to avoid the insurrection but was curtailed, I think the following needs to be noted:

There is an abundance of damning evidence against Trump via the Jan 6 committee.   Primarily from testimonies of high-ranking, connected Republicans who compromised their political careers by testifying.   Not from the committee members but from these witnesses who paid a substantial price for their testimonies.

Throughout, Trump supporters flat out dismiss all of these testimonies.   But when a hint —a glimmer— that there might be some tiny defense for Trump, we see open-arms acceptance and declarations that these tidbits are facts.   And then the spin to create an impression that Trump really was trying to ensure his supporters would not engage in violence.    

There is no defending Trump, but GOP loyalists will continue to try since they are now stuck with this scoundrel as their nominee.

The level of confirmation bias by some Trump supporters is impressive.

well put

Well after reading article and all current comments, i can give the author this much, Hiding The Truth, is a most apropos title for seed, though planted via a cross poli nation of deceived perceptions perceived via perceptions deceived.