By Associated Press Eric Tucker September 11, 2024
Dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own attorney general have said there was no evidence that fraud tipped the race or that the election was stolen.
Former President Donald Trump persisted Tuesday in saying during a nationally televised presidential debate that he had won the 2020 election and continued to take no responsibility for any of the mayhem that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the building to block the peaceful transfer of power.
The comments underscored the Republican’s refusal, even four years later, to accept the reality of his defeat and his unwillingness to admit the extent to which his falsehoods about his election loss emboldened the mob that rushed the Capitol, resulting in violent clashes with law enforcement. It also made clear that Trump’s grievances about 2020 remain central to his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as he continues to profess allegiance to the rioters.
Asked twice if he regretted anything he did on Jan. 6, when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and exhorted them to “fight like hell,” Trump at first responded by complaining that the questioner had failed to note that he had encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully and patriotically” and by noting that one of his backers, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot inside the building by a Capitol Police officer.
He also suggested that protesters who committed crimes during the 2020 racial injustice protests were not prosecuted. But a 2021 Associated Press review of documents in more than 300 federal cases stemming from the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death found that more than 120 defendants across U.S. pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial of federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy.
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Article URL : https://whyy.org/articles/trump-2020-election-lie-jan-6-debate/