Former president Donald Trump is seen in newly released post-Capitol riot speech outtakes declining to say outright “the election’s over,” as well as appearing to grow visibly frustrated with the task of doing such a speech at all.
The footage in question, per a report from the Associated Press, stems from Jan. 7, 2021 (one day after the fatal Capitol riot) and was shown by the House’s Jan. 6 committee on Thursday. Of particular note in the footage, particularly when it comes to the intention of these widely broadcast committee hearings, is the aforementioned moment amid the outtakes in which Trump expressed vocal hesitance to say “the election’s over” while briefly going back-and-forth with daughter Ivanka about related semantics.
“But this election is now over,” Trump is seen saying in the clip. “Congress has certified the results—I don’t wanna say the election’s over. I just wanna say Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, okay?”
At another point, Trump laments the word “yesterday,” revealing to those in the room with him that it’s a “hard” one for him.
“I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday—Yesterday’s a hard word for me. … Take the word yesterday out,” he says.
Elsewhere, Trump makes teeth-clenching facial expressions and pounds on the podium. See more above.
In opening remarks on Thursday, Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson—chair of the committee—summarized the past month and a half of hearings as having told the story “of a president who did everything in his power” to overturn the 2020 election against Joe Biden.
“For 187 minutes on January 6th, this man of unbridled, destructive energy could not be moved—not by his aides, not by his allies, not by the violent chants of rioters or the desperate pleas of those facing down the riot,” Thompson said. “And more tellingly, Donald Trump ignored and disregarded the desperate pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don Jr.”
Last month, documents shared by House Committee on Oversight and Reform chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney showed Trump’s efforts at pressuring the DOJ over his repeated (and unfounded) claims of election fraud. Trump, Maloney explained at the time, was shown in the publicly released emails to have “tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency” as part of a larger effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
