After some of outgoing President Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol building, the anti-Trump conservative group known as The Lincoln Project released a video in which they joined the chorus of voices directly blaming Donald Trump for the violence. In the video, the group intersperses footage of some of Trump’s remarks with footage of the terroristic violence at the Capitol. Among other examples, Trump has repeatedly encouraged an outright rejection of the duly documented electoral outcome in the United States, giving some of his sycophants an impetus to attack the Capitol.
Check out the video below, in which The Lincoln Project denounces Trump as a “traitor”:
Trump gave the order.#NeverForget pic.twitter.com/atDsjGH9WX
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) January 7, 2021
As the Lincoln Project video also notes, as the violence unfolded, Trump released a video message in which, addressing the rioters, he said, “I know how you feel,” as if condoning their actions. In another post, Trump further excused the violence, writing that “[these] are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” In these comments, the outgoing President of the United States didn’t just fail to meaningfully condemn the violence — he actively provided a justification for it, even as top legislative leaders were forced to flee for their own safety while Trump’s violent supporters ransacked the Capitol building. To be clear: his claim that his rightful election victory was “stolen” is delusional.
Twitter and Facebook both ended up removing Trump’s video message on the riots from their respective platforms, and Twitter instituted a 12-hour lock on the president’s account, insisting that “[threats] of and calls to violence have no place on Twitter.” Disgracefully, even after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, half a dozen Republican Senators voted against the certification of Biden’s presidential election win in Arizona, which Congress had been considering when abruptly having to halt their proceedings because of the Trump supporters’ siege of the Capitol. A number of Republican Senators who had previously announced an intention to oppose certifying Biden’s Arizona win reversed course after the violence, perhaps cognizant of the potential for their actions to help incite the Trump terrorists.
