Edited by Deepali Verma
On the occasion of the siege of the U.S.Capitol on the third anniversary of the attack, Donald Trump downplayed his role and argued in favour that those prosecuted for storming the building should be freed.
Addressing a campaign event in Clinton, Iowa with the first Republican nominating contest little more than a week away, Trump referred to those who were jailed in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack “hostages” and said they had been mistreated by the Biden administration.
“They’ve suffered a lot,” Trump expressed. “I call them hostages but some people call them prisoners.”
Conversing with more than a thousand supporters in a school gymnasium, Trump repeated his own claims saying that the 2020 election was fraudulent and claimed himself as a victim of political persecution.
“My indictment was because I challenged the crooked election,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump faces a plethora of state and federal charges owing to his attempts to subvert the election. However, he has not yet been charged with instigating the 2021 insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as legislators were announcing President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
There have been claims that Biden repeatedly called Trump a threat to democracy on the campaign trail, and that messaging has emerged as a crux of his campaign so far. Vice President Kamala Harris talked about the Jan. 6 assault at length during an event in South Carolina on January 6. .However, Trump’s supporters – and even supporters of other Republican presidential hopefuls – have underplayed the significance of Jan. 6, and many have embraced conspiracy theories concerning the events of that day.
Previously, Trump himself suggested during previous campaign stops that undercover FBI agents have played an important role in instigating the attack, an account that is not supported by official investigations.
More than 1,200 people face the charges of taking part in the riot while more than 900 have either pleaded guilty or been convicted following a trial.
“It wasn’t really an insurrection,” remarks Hale Wilson, a pro-Trump from Des Moines who attended a campaign event in Newton, Iowa earlier in the day. “There were foul actors involved that got the crowd going.”
Present, at the Clinton event, Erin George, who is a local county commissioner, said the prison sentences given to the rioters “were 100 percent unwarranted.”
Trump went to Iowa to carry support ahead of the state’s Republican caucus on Jan. 15, which is the initial contest of the Republican presidential nominating contest. He currently is leading all competitors with over 30 percentage points in the state, as per the most polls.
