Trump Tries to Blame Nancy Pelosi for Jan. 6 in Lie-Heavy Debate

In another lie-filled presidential debate performance, Donald Trump repeated baseless claims that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was actually the person responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol following his election loss.

When asked by CNN host and debate moderator Jake Tapper what he would say to “those voters who believed that you violated your constitutional oath through your actions and inaction on January 6, 2021, and worried that you’ll do it again,” Trump responded by deflecting blame to Pelosi.

“Nancy Pelosi — if you just watched the news from two days ago — on tape to her daughter who’s a documentary filmmaker, they say, but she’s saying, “Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this.’ Because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.”

Trump claimed that he had offered the National Guard to Pelosi anticipating the large crowds of his supporters would descend on D.C. for certification day, and that Pelosi now admitted that the resulting violence was on her. “She can’t be very happy with their daughter because it made her into a liar. She said, ‘I take full responsibility for January 6,’” Trump said.

The former president’s statements are, unsurprisingly, misleading. Earlier this month, House Republicans released video purporting to show Pelosi taking on the blame for the riot unfolding in the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“We have responsibility, Terri,’” Pelosi says in the video, while speaking to her chief of staff Terri McCullough. “We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous. You’re going to ask me in the middle of the thing — when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff — ‘Should we call the [National Guard]?’ Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

What the video released by House Republicans didn’t show was that Pelosi’s recorded statements were part of a longer conversation in which she grilled her staff about why Capitol Police were so unprepared the day of the attack. According to Politico, which reviewed 45 minutes of footage provided to the House by Pelosi’s daughter, the former speaker expressed frustration with law enforcement’s response.

“Because it’s stupid that we should be in a situation like this, she says. “Because they thought they had what? They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? What is it that is missing here, in terms of anticipation?”

As fact-checkers were quick to point out, neither Pelosi, nor any member of Congress has the unilateral authority to activate the D.C. National Guard — only the president, defense secretary, and U.S. Army secretary can. Despite what he claimed, Trump made no such authorization ahead of or on the day of the riot. In fact, Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the D.C. National Guard commander, testified before the Jan. 6 Committee that in the days before the riot, Pentagon officials had severely curtailed his ability to speedily deploy troops to locations around D.C., and that the approval for National Guard support on Jan. 6 was delayed by the Pentagon for several hours.

More from Rolling Stone

• Biden Ally Blames Poor Debate Performance on 'Preparation Overload,' Stutter

• In Memos to Quell Doubters, the Biden Campaign Touts Alarming Poll Results

• 'We Are So Screwed': Dems Churn Out Increasingly Desperate Ideas to Dump Biden

Best of Rolling Stone

• The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign

• Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal

• The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence