ALAMO, Texas (AP) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday accepted no responsibility for his part in promoting a violent uprising at the US Capitol last week, despite his comments encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol and praising it to give while they were still assaulting.
“People thought that what I said was completely appropriate,” Trump said.
He made the comments during his first public appearance since the siege of the Capitol, which came when lawmakers compared the votes of the Electoral College, which included the election of Pres. Joe Biden’s victory confirmed. Trump arrived in Texas on Tuesday to blow up his campaign against illegal immigration in an attempt to burn his legacy with eight days left in his term, as lawmakers in Congress appear to accuse him for the second time this week.
In Alamo, Texas, a city in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexican border – the location of the 450th mile of the border wall erected by his government, Trump rejected Democratic calls for his cabinet to remove him from office. declare and remove him from power using the 25th Amendment
“The 25th Amendment poses no risk to me, but will return to Joe Biden and the Biden government,” Trump said. “As the saying goes, be careful what you want.”
The rioting through the halls of Congress has caused lawmakers from both parties and Trump’s vice president to hide, as crowds have called for Mike Pence’s lynching for his role in overseeing the counting of votes. The scene also undermined the hallmark of the republic – the peaceful transition of power. At least five people have been killed, including one Capitol police officer.
“It’s time for peace and calm,” Trump said Tuesday, less than a week after covering the crowd descending on the Capitol. He added: ‘Respect for law enforcement is the foundation of the MAGA agenda’, referring to his slogan ‘Make America Great Again’.
In the days leading up to the January 6 certification vote, Trump urged his supporters to descend to Washington, DC, and support a ‘wild’ rally in support of his baseless allegations of electoral fraud, despite the findings of his own government. Trump spoke for more than an hour to a crowd at the Ellipse and urged Trump supporters to “fight like hell” and suggested that Republican lawmakers “need more courage not to act” and the will of the voters to overthrow him for another term. . He also suggested that he march with them to the Capitol.
As Trump concluded, thousands of his supporters were already on their way to the Capitol, where lawmakers gathered to count the votes. As rioters were still in the building and shelters lawmakers in safe places, Trump released a video at the urging of aides shocked by the violence, who apparently apologized for the incident and said of the rioters: ‘We love you . You are very special. Go home. “
Trump said Tuesday that the “real problem” was not his rhetoric, but the rhetoric the Democrats used to describe the protests and violence against Black Lives Matter in Seattle and Portland this summer.
“Everyone thinks it’s perfectly appropriate,” Trump said in a statement.
Trump expressed anger over pressure from lawmakers for his second indictment this week, claiming: “It causes tremendous anger and division and pain that is far greater than most people will ever understand, which is very dangerous for the US, especially on this very soft time. ”
Alamo was named after the San Antonio mission, where a small group of Texan independence fighters repulsed Mexican forces during a 13-day siege. Most of them died, but the mission became a symbol of resistance for Texans, who eventually defeated the Mexican army.
Trump’s visit there – undoubtedly a symbol of the president’s challenge – comes as he stares at the last days of his presidency separately, resentfully and by the prospect of a second indictment.
While Trump was traveling, Pence assured the country’s governors that the outgoing government was “diligently” working with President-elect Joe Biden’s team. He thanked the governors for their guidance on the coronavirus and promised them a ‘seamless transition’.
Trump aides have urged the president to spend his remaining days in office, emphasizing what they see as the key achievements of his presidency: a massive tax cut, his efforts to reverse federal regulations and the transformation of federal courts with the appointment of conservative judges. . But Trump has been consumed by unfounded allegations of voter fraud and conspiracies.
In Texas, he made remarks highlighting the government’s efforts to curb illegal immigration, and the progress made with its 2016 pledge to sign the campaign: building a “big, beautiful wall” over the length of the southern boundary – an imposing structure of concrete and reinforced steel. But over time, Trump demanded changes that were largely rejected: he wanted it painted black to burn the hands of those who touched it; he wanted it to be decorated with deadly nails; he even wanted to surround it with a spade full of crocodiles. While promising that it would be funded by Mexico, U.S. taxpayers eventually paid the bill.
Eventually, his administration oversaw the construction of approximately 450 kilometers of boundary wall construction – which would probably reach 475 miles on Inauguration Day. The vast majority of the wall replaces smaller obstacles that already existed, although the new wall is significantly more difficult to bypass.
For the past four years, Trump and his government have taken extreme – and often illegal – measures to try to combat illegal and illegal immigration. Their efforts were aided in its final year by the coronavirus pandemic, which halted international travel. But the number of people who have stopped crossing the southern border illegally has increased in recent months. Figures from December show nearly 74,000 encounters at the southwestern border, 3% higher than in November and 81% up from a year earlier.
Dozens of Trump supporters gathered hours before his visit to the Rio Grande Valley near Harlingen Airport, Texas, where he would land. They planned to set up a caravan with vehicles supporting the president and far-right issues, such as the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Trump warned that a reversal of his policy by Biden would bring a ‘tidal wave of illegal immigration’. He added: “To end the policy is to really put America in serious danger.”
Biden said he would stop building the border wall and, where possible, taking executive action to stem some of Trump’s restrictions on legal immigration and asylum seekers. But Biden and his aides have acknowledged the possibility of a new crisis at the border if they act too quickly, and Biden said it could take six months for his government to get funding and set up the necessary infrastructure to curb the Trump era. to weaken. .
Outside the wall, Trump quickly listed his massive changes to the border to discourage asylum. He calls his policy “Stay in Mexico”, under which more than 65,000 asylum seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico since January 2019 for hearings in the US Immigration Court, and concluded agreements with Central American countries to offer asylum to people seeking protection in the United States.
He attributed his wall to a decline in illegal border crossings from a peak of 13 years in 2019, but the government’s accounting office found that the government did not have measures to correlate decline in illegal crossings with wall construction.
Trump falsely said he inherited “open borders” from his predecessor, Barack Obama. He leaves office with about the same number of border patrol agents as when he started, despite a promise to add 5,000, and the monthly number of migrants stopped at the border exceeds the total during much of Obama’s tenure.
___ Associated Press authors Nomaan Merchant in Harlingen, Texas; Ben Fox and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington; Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia; and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.