Donald Trump returning to Capitol Hill for the first time since the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021 is “like an arsonist returning to the scene of the fire,” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said on Thursday.
“The parallel is stunning when you think of it that way,” she continued. “He sought to attack the building. His supporters went with weapons … including AR-style weapons. They were engaged in ‘medieval’ combat, the likes of which Officer [Aquilino] Gonnell hadn’t seen since his time in combat in the military.”
Timothy Heaphy, the former lead investigator of the Jan. 6 select committee, said of the former president and current Republican frontrunner for 2024, “He sat and watched. He set the fire, to follow your arsonist example, he set the fire and then he watched it burn. He gave an incendiary speech encouraging people to march to the Capitol and and ‘fight like hell or you won’t have a country anymore.’”
Heaphy added that Trump ignored “repeated attempts by people very close to him, including his own family, his own chief of staff, his own White House counsel” to tell the rioters to stop.
Heaphy continued, “To the contrary, what he did was he issued a couple of tweets criticizing Mike Pence, calling him a coward.”
He noted that Trump did not issue a statement for the rioters to go home for a full 187 minutes, and continued to insist that the election had been “stolen” and to praise the people who had rushed the Capitol.
“Going back to the scene of the crime is hubris,” Heaphy stated. “Arsonists do that because they’re proud of their work and that’s what we’re seeing today. There’s a hubris that he could get away with it, that he can return to the scene of that crime and generate the kind of sycophantic love that he’s generated.”
The Associated Press reported that Trump was warmly welcomed by House Republicans, who sang “Happy Birthday” to the former president, who turns 78 on Friday. He was presented with a baseball and bat from the annual congressional game and an American flag cake with first 45 and then 47 candles, a reference to his past and potential future presidential placement.
“There was certainly a sense of unity, the most unified I felt our caucus has been in a long time,” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas was quoted as saying by Politico. “I think we passed that magic moment when we are all ready to move forward.”
Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felonies in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial, has not yet been tried on the charges stemming from Jan. 6.
Watch the full “Deadline: White House” segment in the video above.
