Trump Says He Wishes He Could’ve Marched With Supporters On Jan. 6, Secret Service Wouldn’t Allow It

Former President Donald Trump said that he wanted to march with his supporters ahead of the Capitol riot, but that Secret Service wouldn’t let him.

“Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” he said in the interview conducted at his Mar-a-Lago residence by Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey.

In the interview, Trump repeatedly deflected blame that the events of January 6, 2021, which turned deadly, were his fault. He critiqued Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

“I thought it was a shame, and I kept asking, ‘Why isn’t she doing something about it? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of D.C. also.’ The mayor of D.C. and Nancy Pelosi are in charge,” Trump said.

“I hated seeing it. I hated seeing it. And I said, ‘It’s got to be taken care of,’ and I assumed they were taking care of it,” he added.

Trump had spoken at the “Stop the Steal” rally earlier in the day, telling his supporters, “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

After his supporters breached the Capitol in efforts to stop Vice President Mike Pence‘s certification of President Joe Biden‘s 2020 election win, Trump waited hours to request that his supporters leave after his family members and lawmakers urged him to make a statement.

In the interview, Trump also addressed the seven-hour gap in White House phone records from January 6, saying that he didn’t interfere with the records or use a burner phone.

Trump refused to confirm another bid for the White House, but he did say, “I think a lot of people are going to be very happy by my decision because it’s a little boring now.”