On January 6, 2021, while violent rioters stormed the Capitol, Donald Trump let 187 minutes go by before finally releasing a video telling his supporters to go home. It was an extremely tepid condemnation of violence while also making sure to tell the insurrectionists, “we love you.”
On January 7, he again remained silent most of the day before finally releasing another video talking about “law and order” and claiming to have taken immediate action—something we now know, thanks to these hearings, was a complete lie.
During Thursday’s hearing, the Jan. 6 committee released some of the outtakes from that January 7 video, showing that things behind the scenes were even worse than what we saw. Some of the outtakes are genuinely funny, like Trump not being able to say the word “yesterday” and his aggressive gestures of frustration when he slips up. But there are also some disturbing insights into Trump’s line of thinking.
Wow these outtakes didn’t disappoint pic.twitter.com/bGVXolI2yV
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 22, 2022
The first of these moments comes when Trump refuses to be too harsh with his condemnation for the rioters.
“And to those who broke the law, you will pay,” he says. “You do not represent our movement, you do not represent our country, and if you broke the law—” Here he cuts himself off, shaking his head. “I can’t say that. I already said ‘you will pay.'”
The person (or one of the people) he’s talking to there is his daughter Ivanka, who we can hear guiding him through the changes he wants to make and appeasing him throughout. It’s not clear exactly what he was refusing to say at this point, although notably, in the final version he does not tell the violent rioters that they don’t represent the “movement,” only that they don’t represent the country.
At another point in the outtake video, Trump refuses to say that the election is over. “But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results—I don’t wanna say the election is over,” he says, interrupting himself again. “I just wanna say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, OK?
At the time, I remember there being a lot of debate as to whether this video was a concession speech. He did say “A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.” But his refusal to acknowledge the validity of the election was glaring. Even now, a year and a half later, he’s still refusing to stop pushing those lies. It’s fascinating to see him make that decision in real-time.
(image: screencap)
