Former President Donald Trump called the Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol “smart” for being angry at the 2020 election results, according to new footage from a documentary covering his final days in office.
Trump described Jan. 6, 2021, as “a sad day” marked by “great anger” in the United States. The then-president said people who supported him visited Washington, D.C., that day because they believed the 2020 election was “rigged,” a belief he has pushed numerous times since leaving office, as seen in a clip of the Discovery+ documentary titled Unprecedented.
“A very small portion, as you know, went down to the Capitol, and then a very small portion of them went in,” Trump said. “But I will tell you: They were angry from the standpoint of what happened in the election because they’re smart, and they see, and they saw what happened. And I believe that that was a big part of what happened on Jan. 6.”
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What really happened at the Capitol on January 6? #Unprecedented is streaming now on @discoveryplus. pic.twitter.com/ylAwI0roRa
— Unprecedented (@Unprecedented) July 10, 2022
Since leaving the White House, Trump has campaigned for and endorsed many Republican candidates who share his belief that the 2020 election was not fair. Some candidates endorsed by Trump, such as J.D. Vance running in the Ohio Senate, have won their primary elections, while others, like Katie Arrington running in the South Carolina House of Representatives race, have lost. The Trump campaign filed several legal challenges following the 2020 election, the majority of which were tossed by federal courts.
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Alex Holder, the British documentary maker who created Unprecedented, has cooperated with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, providing lawmakers with a trove of unseen footage of Trump and his allies in the hours before the riot.
Trump has not announced plans to run in the 2024 presidential election, but he has hinted at a run several times since leaving office. In a June interview, the former president said his family is on board with the possibility of him running again in 2024.
