Trump Says He Wanted to March to the Capitol on Jan. 6

If former President Donald Trump has one regret about Jan. 6, it’s that he didn’t join his followers on their march to the Capitol, where they rioted and delayed the 2020 presidential election certification vote for several hours.

At least that’s what the former president told the Washington Post in an interview published Thursday, in which he continued to deflect blame for Jan. 6, as Congressional investigators continue to scrutinize him and his circle’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. 

“Secret Service said I couldn’t go,” Trump said of joining his followers on their march from the “Save America” rally at the Ellipse to Capitol Hill. “I would have gone there in a minute.”

The march Trump says he wanted to make culminated with hundreds of his supporters storming the Capitol, making threats against officials including his own Vice President Mike Pence. More than 800 people have since been charged in connection with the riot, according to an Insider analysis last month. 

Trump also said the “fake news” should have given him more credit for the crowd which gathered at the Ellipse. 

“The crowd was far bigger than I even thought. I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to,” Trump said. “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. But this was a tremendous crowd.”

But while Trump wanted to take credit for the crowd, he deflected blame for what members of that crowd later did, and chose to pin it on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. Pelosi neither controls securing the Capitol, nor the National Guard. 

“I thought it was a shame, and I kept asking why isn’t [Pelosi] doing something about it? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of D.C. also,” Trump said of watching the riot. “I hated seeing it. I hated seeing it. And I said, ‘It’s got to be taken care of,’ and I assumed they were taking care of it.”

Trump, who recently said he didn’t know what a “burner phone” was and later was contradicted by his former national security adviser John Bolton, also told the Washington Post he didn’t use burner phones and denied removing call logs from the official White House record. 

He also told the Post that while he had a “very good” memory, he couldn’t remember everyone he talked to that afternoon.

“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.”

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