- It took President Donald Trump several hours to respond to the Capitol building uprising last Wednesday, despite numerous pleas from officials, advisers and members of his own family.
- A new report in The Washington Post says that Trump was too busy watching the insurgency unfold on TV to do anything to contain it.
- “He was difficult to contact, and you know why? Because it was live TV. If it’s TiVo, he just presses the pause button and answers calls,” a Trump adviser told the Post.
- The president, said Senator Lindsey Graham, was also reluctant to do anything because “he saw these people as allies on his journey and sympathetic to the idea that the election was stolen”.
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President Donald Trump was too busy watching the violent Capitol building uprising on TV to help smother it, advisers told The Washington Post.
Several senators arrested in the Capitol building during the siege told the Post that they tried to ask the president for help, but their calls were not answered. Senator Lindsey Graham said she was forced to call Ivanka Trump when the president did not answer.
Trump, Graham said, was apparently mesmerized by the footage of his followers invading the Capitol and could not move away from the screen.
“It took a while to assess the seriousness of the situation,” Graham told the Post. “The president saw these people as allies on his journey and sympathetic to the idea that the election was stolen.”
Read More: Trump tweeted furiously about Mike Pence while the vice president was being attacked on Capitol Hill, and then gave him silent treatment for several days
“It was difficult to contact him, and do you know why? Because it was live TV, ”a Trump adviser told the newspaper. “If it’s TiVo, he just presses the pause button and answers the calls. If it’s live TV, he watches and just watched it all unfold.”
Trump has long seen his presidency through the lens of TV – some estimates say he watches up to five hours of cable news a day – so it’s no surprise that he chose to see the insurrection on the screen. He also often uses low television ratings as a means of insulting a person or organization.
For example, in August, Trump criticized the NBA for its decision to allow athletes to kneel during the national anthem, warning that it would have a negative impact on league rankings.
“Look at the basketball ratings. They have dropped to a very low number,” he said. “There was a malice in the way the NBA was made, too. The NBA is a problem. Big problems. Bigger problems than they realize.”
He also bragged regularly about evaluations of his daily coronavirus briefings, once bragging that his briefings were as popular as the end of the “The Bachelor” season.
Still, advisers told The Post that they were surprised by Trump’s reluctance to act as events unfolded. The White House team alerted the president to events in the Capitol building around 2:00 pm Eastern time, but instead of urging his followers to remain calm, he took the opportunity to send a tweet expressing his disappointment at the vice President Mike Pence.
Read More: House Democrats present an impeachment article accusing Trump of inciting insurrection
“Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states the chance to certify a corrected set of facts, and not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones they were asked to certify in advance. The USA demands the truth! “President Trump wrote at 2:24 pm, when the mob was breaking into the building.
A few minutes later, he followed up with a tweet urging the crowd: “Please support our Police and Capitol Police. They are really on our country’s side. Be at peace!”
But getting Trump to do more than tweet was difficult, according to consultants. At about 4 pm Eastern time, they had the President shoot a video in which he referred to the rebels as “very special people” and said “I know how you feel”.
“We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You are very special. You have seen what happens. You see how others are treated, who are so bad and mean. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace, “he said.
Other politicians, including Senator Kevin McCarthy and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, said they also struggled to connect with the president on the afternoon of January 6.
“The president caused this protest; he is the only one who can make it stop,” Christie told ABC News.