Trump reveals he wanted to JOIN Jan. 6 march to the Capitol

Donald Trump wanted to march on the U.S. Capitol with his supporters on January 6 last year but was stopped by his Secret Service, the former president claimed in an interview published Thursday. He also shrugged off the furor surrounding the seven-hour gap in White House phone logs that day, which includes the deadly hours during which rioters breached the Capitol. [Trump also offered an updated on his 2024 presidential run. Read about it here.]

‘Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,’ Trump told the Washington Post in an interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort. The former president also took aim at lawmakers investigating what led to the events of January 6 following Ivanka’s eight-hour interview with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack. 

Trump claimed he offered to shield his daughter with ‘privilege’, while other reports indicate she did not invoke. Trump went on to call the interview between Ivanka and the committee about the Capitol riot a ‘shame and harassment’. He added that the committee never reached out to him personally, but he was vague about what would happen if it did, stating ‘It depends what the request is.’

The former president also denied suggestions that he destroyed call logs or used burner phones in the hours between 11:17 a.m. and 6:54 p.m., and did not say who he spoke with during that period aside from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. ‘From the standpoint of telephone calls, I don’t remember getting very many,’ Trump said. ‘Why would I care about who called me? If congressmen were calling me, what difference did it make? There was nothing secretive about it. There was no secret.’

The former president previously denied even knowing what a ‘burner phone’ is, though late last month his former National Security Adviser John Bolton claimed he heard his ex-boss use the term multiple times. He even touted the ‘tremendous’ crowd size at his White House Stop the Steal rally before the riot took place, praising its organizers – despite federal charges looming over some who planned the day. ‘The crowd was far bigger than I even thought. I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to. I don’t know what that means, but you see very few pictures. They don’t want to show pictures, the fake news doesn’t want to show pictures,’ Trump said.

While the exact number of how many people heard Trump speak is unknown, the Justice Department has charged at least 800 people in connection with the insurrection. Trump denied regretting encouraging people to descend on Washington that day, nor did he admit to charging up the crowd with inflammatory speech. ‘I said peaceful and patriotic,’ he pointed out, without reportedly mentioning his other remarks.

He also heaped praise on conservative activist Virginia Thomas, who admitted last month in a Washington Free Beacon interview that she was at the ex-president’s Stop the Steal rally but left before he took the stage. Virginia Thomas is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who cast the lone dissenting vote when the high court ruled Trump must hand over records linked to the insurrection to the Capitol riot committee.

Reports indicate that Virginia Thomas (pictured center) was highly influential in shaping the former president’s thinking, at least for a time. The Democrat-led panel is reportedly in possession of more than two dozen text messages between her and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, many of which involve her peddling false QAnon conspiracy theories and pushing for ways to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

Trump told the Post he did not know about those efforts, though he admitted to talking to her when he was in the White House. ‘First of all, her husband is a great justice. And she’s a fine woman. And she loves our country,’ the ex-president said in the Thursday interview.

As for the violence that broke out on January 6 last year, which resulted in the deaths of both Trump supporters and members of law enforcement, he placed the majority of the blame on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. ‘I thought it was a shame, and I kept asking why isn’t she doing something about it? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of D.C. also. The mayor of D.C. and Nancy Pelosi are in charge,’ Trump told the Post. He added that he ‘hated seeing’ the riot and ‘assumed they were taking care of it’ – despite staff claiming he was in a buoyant mood that day.

Pelosi, who was ushered to a secure location when Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol and some demanded her by name, worked with law enforcement that day to try to secure the complex. The Post noted that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s staff tried multiple times to get in contact with Trump that day.

On the subject of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who claimed Trump repeatedly broached him about overturning the 2020 election results, the former president denied ever bringing the subject up but still held tight to the notion that the race ended in fraud. ‘I didn’t ask him to do it. He’s in no position to do it. I certainly didn’t ask him to do it,’ Trump said.

He went on, ‘But I believe when you see massive election fraud, I can’t imagine that somebody who won the election based on fraud, that something doesn’t happen? How has it not happened? If you are a bank robber, or you’re a jewelry store robber, and you go into Tiffany’s and you steal their diamonds and get caught, you have to give the diamonds back.’

Last month, Trump withdrew his endorsement of Brooks’ Alabama Senate bid over the latter’s comments that Republicans must focus on future elections rather than re-litigating 2020. Looking ahead, however, to 2024, Trump dismissed the notion that he would face a primary challenge from current and former allies like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, ex-Vice President Mike Pence and ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

‘If I ran, I can’t imagine they’d want to run. Some out of loyalty would have had a hard time running. I think that most of those people, and almost every name you mentioned, is there because of me. In some cases, because I backed them and endorsed them,’ Trump claimed.

Of DeSantis (pictured), Trump said: ‘You know Ron was at 3 percent, and the day I endorsed him, he won the race … As soon as I endorsed him, the race was over. I have a good relationship with Ron, I have a good relationship with all the names you mentioned. Would they run against me? I doubt they would run against me. I doubt it.’