“I can’t say that…can we take it off?” In this video broadcast on US television on Thursday, we can discover Donald Trump, already defeated by Joe Biden a few weeks earlier but still president of the United States in office, repeating the speech he is going to deliver on January 7. He must then react, the day after the invasion of the Capitol – seat of the US Congress in Washington – by his supporters. And, from hesitation to correction, the exercise obviously poses a lot of difficulties for him.
The unveiling of this unpublished document to the general public is part of the work of the parliamentary investigation commission aimed at clarifying this assault on January 6, 2021. At the end of Thursday’s session, its eighth session in the space of six weeks and the second to be broadcast on television, the elected members of the commission also issued a joint statement. They consider that the then president of the United States “failed in his duty” in this historical circumstance and that those responsible for the act “including the White House, must be held accountable.”
A political reading
Created a year ago, the team of parliamentary investigators had time to listen to more than 1,000 testimonies and produce around 120,000 documents. And among them: Donald Trump’s speaking tests in front of the camera. The difficulties encountered by the US president at the time to control his speech go beyond the anecdote. Because if certain differences between the official video and these first attempts are only semantic, others invite a much more political reading.
Thus, in the official video, broadcast on January 7, 2021, Donald Trump assured: “On January 20, a new administration will be sworn in. Now I strive to ensure a smooth, orderly and smooth transfer of power. This moment calls for healing. and reconciliation.” A way of acknowledging, without saying so, the victory of Joe Biden.
But behind the scenes, shared by the investigation commission, he appears much less conciliatory: “‘The election was left behind. The results have been certified’… I don’t want to say ‘the election was left behind’, I will only say that Congress validated the results without saying that the elections are behind us, okay? Then we hear the voice of his daughter, Ivanka – who we know disapproved of her father’s refusal to admit the results of the vote – suggest: “You can say: ‘Now that Congress has validated …’.
double deal
Other times they are double barreled. As he embarked weeks ago on a long and headlong run from challenge to challenge, Donald Trump stumbles over the word “yesterday” (“yesterday”, in French): “‘Yesterday‘, it’s hard for me to say. I will removeyesterday‘ because it doesn’t work with the rest.”
The teleprompter also annoys him. In fact, she doesn’t know if she should read “challenge” (challenge) or “parade(gorge) “The protesters who entered the Capitol defied the siege… No, desecrated is ‘desecrated’? I can’t see well… No, no, I’ll get by,” he tells the crowd. His final sentence will be: “The protesters who have entered the Capitol have littered the seat of American democracy.”
A report in the fall
The video of these rehearsals ends with a surprising last sequence. While he only has to swear that “(his) sole purpose of his was (s)’ to ensure the integrity of the vote,” Donald Trump jokes several times, to the point that the head of state slams his desk.
And probably the parliamentarians are not at the end of their revelations, nor the Americans of their discoveries about this riot, emblematic of the chaotic end of Donald Trump’s mandate. The commission of inquiry announced that it would hold further hearings in September with a view to presenting its report later in the fall.
Source: BFM TV
