Trump Defends Riot Response As "Totally Appropriate"

[Amber]

A week after the horrifying riot on Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump still believes he was correct in handling the Capitol rioters. 

As Trump prepared to leave D.C. for Alamo, Texas to discuss the border, he was asked about his responsibility for last week's events. Trump defended the remarks he made last week that helped incite a crowd of his supporters to violently storm the U.S. Capitol.

"If you read my speech, and many people have done it and I've seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television, it's been analyzed and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate," Trump said. "Everybody to a 'T' thought it was totally appropriate."

Trump, instead, said the protests that occurred this past summer were “the real problem.”

"If you look at what other people have said, politicians at a high level about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem,” he said.

Trump's comments came six days after riots in and around the Capitol by his supporters left five people dead and many others injured. They also come one day before the House is set to impeach him, for the second time, over his role in inciting the riots. 

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On January 6th before the riot, Trump said to his supporters, "You'll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong." He went on, "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

Trump's role in the riots has been widely condemned by lawmakers in both parties. He was also banned from Twitter and other platforms for using them to incite his supporters — suspensions that the President on Tuesday blasted as "a terrible mistake" by "big tech".

The House of Representatives plans to vote tonight on a measure calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump. 

Under the 25th Amendment, the Vice President can assume power as acting President if a majority of the Cabinet determines the President is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

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