Fox News Invites Trump on to Whitewash the January 6 Insurrection

There was “love in the air,” the ex-president claims about the day thousands stormed the Capitol.

A Trump supporter invites a police officer into a fist fight during a melee at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Donald Trump appeared on Fox News on Sunday morning to promote some brazen revisionism of the January 6 insurrection. Calling into Maria Bartiromo’s show, the former president started with his usual fibbing about crowd size—he claimed “over a million people” attended his speech at the White House just before the attack on the Capitol Building (attendees numbered closer to 30,000). Then, he painted a rosy alternate reality of what happened that day, with zero pushback from Bartiromo.

Trump claimed he gave “a very mild-mannered speech” on January 6, which came shortly after Rudy Giuliani warmed up the crowd by urging them to have “trial by combat” over an election that Trump and his allies falsely claimed was stolen through fraud. 

“There was such love at that rally… these were peaceful people,” Trump told Bartiromo, despite that many in the crowd grew belligerent as he too called for battle against a Congress about to certify Joe Biden’s presidential victory, telling his supporters to “show strength” or risk losing their country altogether. 

“The love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump enthused on Fox News on Sunday. 

 

Trump’s call-in segment also included his false claim that January 6 couldn’t have been a violent insurrection because “there were no guns whatsoever.” At least four people have been charged by federal or local law enforcement to date with firearms possession at the Capitol that day, and police confiscated stun guns, bear spray, baseball bats, and flagpoles among other weapons used by insurrectionists.

Meanwhile, many members of Congress—including those in his own party—have boosted spending on personal security, dropping campaign money on round-the-clock protection details and fortifications for their homes, out of fear that the forces behind January 6 continue to be a serious threat.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate