A damning supercut of former President Donald Trump's speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6, 2021 seems to back up the testimony of a former White House aide who said Trump explicitly wanted his supporters to march on the United States Capitol despite knowing many of them were armed with weapons.
The supercut was assembled by the Republican Accountability Project, a coalition of prominent conservatives who have targeted Republicans they hold responsible for the attack against the nation's seat of government, which took place after a mob of Trump's supporters, many of them White nationalists and White supremacists, stormed the Capitol on the false premise the 2020 general election had been stolen.
The organization said the footage "seems to back up" what Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said under oath to the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the Capitol riot.
Hutchinson told the committee that Trump had been "very concerned" about the shot camerapeople would get of the "Stop the Steal" event "because the rally space wasn't full."
Indeed, when Trump spoke, he kept making references to the size of the crowd, declaring that "thousands" of people were in attendance but that those viewing the proceedings from elsewhere that "you don't see hundreds of thousands of people behind you."
Hutchinson stressed that Trump was "angry" that the Secret Service was not allowing people who had arrived armed with weapons into the event. The footage shows Trump saying he "would love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us."
Hutchinson also said that she heard Trump say that those in attendance were "not here to hurt me" and had demanded that his security people "Let my people in" so they could "march to the Capitol after the rally's over."
For many, the footage demonstrated that Hutchinson was telling the truth about the events of that day.
Moreover, it showed that Trump had encouraged the attack that ultimately claimed several lives and resulted in over a hundred injuries to law enforcement as well as millions of dollars in damages.
Hutchinson's testimony has also garnered significant attention once she told the House Select Committee that a Secret Service agent told her Trump had gotten into a physical altercation when he attempted to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine.
By Hutchinson's recollection, the Secret Service agent said Trump had wanted to go to the United States Capitol and see his supporters.
Trump has dismissed Hutchinson's testimony describing her as a "total phony" in a post on Truth Social, his struggling social media platform, adding that the allegation that he attempted to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine "sick and fraudulent, very much like the Unselect Committee itself."
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