AP FACT CHECK: Trump team glosses over his Jan. 6 tirade

Donald Trump's defense team in his impeachment trial is asserting that he called for non-violent protest when he spoke to his followers at a rally prefacing their assault on the Capitol last month

Trump Impeachment (The Washington Post)

Donald Trump s legal team thoroughly distorted his remarks from the rally that prefaced the storming of the Capitol last month, seizing on the one instance when Trump spoke of peaceful protest in his “fight like hell” tirade of anger and grievance.

Trump attorney Michael van der Veen accused House Democratic impeachment managers of showing selectively edited scenes of the violence and Trump's words Jan. 6.

Yet he ignored the incendiary substance and tenor of that staging speech as well as the president's words of affection for the attackers later, while they were still hunting for lawmakers and sacking their offices. He ignored the fact, too, that all of Trump's provocations that day and for weeks beforehand had the lie of a stolen election at their core.

A look at rhetoric from the Senate impeachment trial, where Trump is charged with inciting the siege of the Capitol before Congress affirmed his defeat to Joe Biden in the presidential election:

VAN DER VEEN: “No thinking person could seriously believe that the president's Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection. ... Nothing in the text could ever be construed as encouraging, condoning or enticing unlawful activity of any kind. Far from promoting insurrection against the United States, the president's remarks explicitly encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically.”

THE FACTS: This characterization does not resemble Trump's speech. For more than an hour, Trump made the case that he and his supporters at the rally had been “cheated” and “defrauded” in the “rigged” election by a “criminal enterprise” made up of some of the “weak” legislators the insurrectionists were about to confront.

As for Trump “explicitly” encouraging non-violence, as the lawyer put it, the president's sole gesture in the speech was this passing remark, lost in the winds of that day's rage: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

There were no other approximate appeals for calm, order or respect for the institutions that Trump assailed in the speech as a “swamp.”

“That was the one time, the only time, President Trump used the word ‘peaceful’ or any suggestion of non-violence," Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, one of the Democratic impeachment managers, said during the trial. "President Trump used the word ‘fight’ or ‘fighting’ 20 times.”

Her count is correct. In addition, Trump thanked supporters when they chanted: “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!”

To be sure, not all of Trump's “fighting” words were about the march to the Capitol. Some were about the political struggle to reverse a fair and certified election that he lost or about his other struggles in Washington.

But he sent his followers off to the Capitol with these words: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore."

This, after his lawyer Rudy Giuliani had told the crowd: “Let’s have trial by combat.”

This, after Trump had summoned his followers to Washington in the first place with the promise: “Be there, will be wild!”

At the rally, Trump roused his followers with words such as these:

—"Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength." This was in reference to Republicans in Congress who weren't going along with his effort to subvert the election.

—"You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” That was to the marchers specifically.

—“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules." Despite this remark, van der Veen argued Friday that the “entire premise” of Trump's rally speech was that the democratic process should “play out according to the letter of the law.”

—"You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen." A reference to Biden's ascendance to the presidency if he wasn't stopped.

—"We are going to the Capitol," Trump told his followers, to “try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue." Actually, he didn't go with them.

For all of that, his attorney Friday contended that Trump had “devoted nearly his entire speech to an extended discussion” of the voting process.

During the melee that ensued, Trump made a video telling the attackers it was time to “go home.” Only when the violence was underway did he stress the need for “law and order” and “peace.” But he added: “We love you. You're very special people.” Others are “so bad and evil.”

He followed later with a tweet that expressed no concern with the deadly consequences of the siege. He appeared to see justice in what had transpired.

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” he wrote. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

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