Donald Trump has no regrets about Jan. 6.
During a a CNN town hall on Wednesday, moderator Kaitlan Collins asked the former president whether he has “any regrets about his actions that day.” In response, Trump boasted about the size of the crowd.
“January 6th had to do with the fact that hundreds of thousands of people, and you don’t see the pictures very often. A lot of the people here probably were there. Jan. 6 was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to,” he told Collins. “That was prior to the walk down to the Capitol building. I’ve never spoken to a crowd as large as this, and that was because they thought the election was rigged.”
Trump continued by claiming the crowd “had love in their heart.” Although it didn’t look like there was much love in the crowd when it descended on the Capitol building and attacked police officers who were protecting it.
“They were there proud,” Trump said. “They were there with love in their heart. That was was unbelievable, and it was a beautiful day. And what I was asked to do. I wasn’t involved in it very much. I was asked to come in and would I make a speech. I made a speech and I said walk peacefully and patriotically.”
The former president then tried to blame former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for what happened that day, claiming she was “in charge of national security.”
When asked why he didn’t tell his supporters to leave the Capitol sooner, Trump pulled out a print out of his tweets from the day before when he told his supporters to be “peaceful.” But that was before he told them from the stage of the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6 to “fight like hell” or they wouldn’t “have a country anymore.”
Collins pushed back, saying, “They’re not in charge of the National Guard,” and telling Trump that his Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller said Trump never gave a formal order to deploy it.
“He did not say that,” Trump said.
“He has testified that,” Collins said.
Trump, who was found liable for defamation and battery of E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday, opened the town hall by mocking the author. “I was very famous then and I owned the Plaza Hotel right next door and I owned the buildings around it — I’m not going into a dressing room of a crowded department store,” Trump retorted when asked about the recent verdict.
The former president also when on his usual rant of unfounded claims of election fraud Wednesday. Prior to CNN’s town hall, former Capitol Police officer Michael Fanone wrote in Rolling Stone, “Those lies persuaded thousands of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, violently attacking uniformed police officers and terrorizing members of Congress and their staff. I witnessed this assault firsthand… As a result of my efforts that day I was severely beaten, struck numerous times with a taser, and suffered a heart attack as well as a traumatic brain injury. One police officer died, and several others took their own lives in the wake of that barbaric day.”