Former House Speaker and current California Representative Nancy Pelosi derided former President Donald Trump in a recent interview over his supposed role in fomenting the riot at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. While discussing a recent interview Trump did with NBC News, she claimed he was projecting responsibility for the violence.
In a conversation on MSNBC, Pelosi responded to Trump’s comments blaming her for the riot at the Capitol building. He claimed that he requested 10,000 National Guard troops to help defend the building from rioters and that Pelosi turned down his request.
“Well, the former occupant of the White House has always been about projection. He knows he's responsible for that, so he projects it on to others. His instigation of an insurrection, an assault on our constitution the day we were supposed to approve the—well, and we did—the work of the electoral college, the result of the electoral college, the assault on the Capitol building, the assault on the constitution, the assault on our democracy. Shame on him.”
Pelosi continued, claiming that she and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “begged him to send the troops again and again.”
"These Trumpites were attacking the Capitol, fighting the police, threatening my life and the life of the vice president — [and] we're turning down the troops? There's a sickness here and there has to be an intervention. And that intervention has to be the [2024] election, which we have to win,” the former House Speaker added.
However, last year, House Republicans called into question the findings of the Democratic House Select Committee exploring the J6 incident, also noting that the former Speaker rejected calls for troops at the Capitol building. Their report underscored a lack of preparation, training, and staffing as factors that played into the violence.
But now, House Republicans have dropped their report. Included in the report are a bunch of text and email messages on Wednesday that the Committee ignored, but the Republicans found as a result of their probe. The Republicans on the report – Reps. Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Troy Nehls, Jim Jordan, and Kelly Armstrong — pointed to failures of the Democratic leadership and the Capitol Police leadership who were more concerned about the “optics” of the National Guard or armed officers than they were about security. Part of this was because of the National Guard having to be called out in the past for BLM/Antifa riots.
Banks said Pelosi had a role in the failures and left the Republicans out.
“Our report exposes the partisanship, incompetence and indifference that led to the disaster on January 6 and it the leading role Speaker Pelosi and her office played in the security failure at the Capitol,” he said. “Unlike the sham January 6th Committee, House Republicans produced a useful report that will keep our Capitol and USCP officers safe with no subpoena power and no budget.”
The debate over J6 continues more than two years after the incident occurred. Democrats have continually used the riots as a political attack against Trump and his supporters. Currently, they have partnered with anti-Trump Republicans to use the riot to argue that the 14th Amendment disqualifies the former president from appearing on the ballot. So far, their efforts have failed.