Former President Trump said Sunday during an interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton that he was concerned about the anticipated crowd size near the Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6 riot.
His team notified the Department of Defense about the magnitude of the rally and requested 10,000 national guardsmen be on standby.
"I requested, I said this rally will be bigger than anyone thinks, because everyone I see said 'we’ll be at the rally,'" he said, noting it was probably the biggest crowd he’s spoken before. “And I said that I think we should have 10,000 [national guardsmen] … and they took that number.”
He said the suggestion was rejected.
“From what I understand, they gave it to people at Capitol, that is controlled by Pelosi, and I heard they rejected it because they didn’t think it would look good.”
Last week, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told a bipartisan Senate panel that he didn’t know then that his officers had received a report from the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, that forecast, in detail, the chances that extremists could bring "war" to Washington the following day.
The head of the FBI’s office in Washington has said that once he received the Jan. 5 warning, the information was quickly shared with other law enforcement agencies through a joint terrorism task force.
Sund and House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving also could not agree on when National Guard assistance was requested. [...]
Sund and Irving disagreed on when the National Guard was called and on requests for the guard beforehand. Sund said he spoke to both Stenger and Irving about requesting the National Guard in the days before the riot, and that Irving said he was concerned about the "optics" of having them present. Irving denied that, saying Sund’s account was "categorically false." (Fox News)
Hilton also asked the former president about reports that claimed he was watching the riot and “actually you liked what you were seeing because you felt it was your people fighting for you.”
Trump dismissed the accusation.
“That is incorrect reporting, I was not watching TV, I turned it on when I heard about it and did a lot of moves,” he replied.
The former president also said he “hated” what happened on Jan. 6 but also pointed out the double standard over how it was treated versus the riots over the summer by antifa and the radical left that left cities across the U.S. burning. “No one seems to be bothered by that,” he noted.
He concluded by reiterating that he “hate[s] to see any of that.”
VIDEO - Steve Hilton to Trump: Do You Regret Appearing ‘To Like What You’re Seeing’ on Video When the Capitol Riot Was Unfolding? https://t.co/4O8tauMTNJ
— Grabien (@GrabienMedia) March 1, 2021