Donald Trump Was ‘Almost Giddy’ During the Riot at the Capitol, the Author Says

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Donald Trump was “almost stunned” watching his supporters rush to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Carol Leonnig, co-author of “I Alone Can Fix It,” described the scene in an interview with CNN. Leonnig said Trump was reluctant to kill the rioters, despite urging from son Ivanka. LoadingSomething is loading.

Donald Trump was “almost bullied” while watching the riot at the Capitol on TV on Jan. 6, according to Carol Leonnig, co-author of the book “I Alone Can Fix It.”

Leonnig described the scene in an interview with CNN.

“He was in the dining room, outside the Oval Office, watching it and almost sad,” Leonnig said.

“Here he sees thousands of his supporters who are usually stepping on the steps, barricade victories, all gathering for him, to try to stop election certification for Joe Biden. And he feels really supported and empowered it’s, and again, sad. “

Leonnig said that after reports surfaced that there had been shootings, Trump finally became concerned about the “optics” of the chaos.

“And he, according to our sources, says ‘oh, crap’. And not ‘oh, crap I have to do something,’ it ‘doesn’t look that good,'” Leonnig said.

“Optics were bad. That was a consistently important priority for the president at the time,” Leonnig said.

According to Leonnig, Trump was reluctant to kill the rioters despite clearly committing crimes by breaking barriers to the Capitol.

“It takes at least two hours for a series of assistants, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows, to get the president right about calling the dogs,” Leonnig said. . “But he’s the last person to realize what’s necessary and what he has to say.”

Trump later released a video statement in which he repeated false claims about the election being stolen and told the rioters, “We love you, you are very special.”

Washington Post journalist Carol Leonnig is co -author of the book “I Alone Can Fix It” with her colleague Philip Rucker.

Rucker and Leonnig interviewed a range of senior officials from the Trump administration for the book, including the former president himself.

A few months after the Capitol uprising, Trump talked to Rucker and Leonnig about the troublemakers. “Personally, what I want is what they want,” Trump told them, according to The Guardian.

This is Leonnig and Rucker’s second book about Trump after they reported the first three years of his presidency on “A Very Stable Genius.”

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