Frankly, even without the reporting, I could’ve told you with pretty good accuracy what Donald Trump was doing on the anniversary of the infamous January 6th riot. After he canceled the big press conference he had planned, we knew with pretty good certainty that he’d spend the day rage-watching all of the various coverage of the day from the safety of his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Now that reporting has finally come to light, I was pretty much right.
Newsweek’s Bill Powell hit today’s media cycle with a new report claiming Donald Trump spent the Capitol riot anniversary at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he obsessively watched coverage of President Joe Biden’s January 6th speech — as well as various other somber coverage of the day — and reached out to his friends to bitterly whine and complain about all the press that the President and the anniversary were getting.
Of course, Trump did periodically step away from his rage-watching plans a few different times that day, to fire off a handful of rage-filled, unhinged statements letting everyone know how genuinely upset he was over the whole matter.
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But for the most part, the report claims Trump spent most of the day reaching out to his friends and allies to whine and moan about all the attention the President was getting.
“As President Joe Biden spoke on January 6, the first anniversary of the Capitol riots, Donald Trump was fuming. From his Mar-a-Lago estate, he watched as Biden lambasted him, blaming him directly for the unrest, branding him as nothing less than a threat to American democracy,” Powell writes in his report, adding, “Trump had known what was coming.”
“He expected Biden and the media to savage him on the anniversary. Not because he deserved it–close friends and political allies of the former president all say he still angrily rejects any culpability for the January 6 riot—but because, as he told one friend, ‘it’s all they’ve got.'”
One Mar-a-Lago Trump pal said, “[Trump said] they can’t talk about anything else because the guy [Biden] is such a disaster.”
The Newsweek report does note that the one-term, twice-impeached Mar-a-Lago resident didn’t end up watching every second of the January 6th coverage that day, with one Trump insider confirming that the ex-president did stop watching a few times “to take some phone calls and for lunch. But he watched most of it—and was furious.”
Pretty much exactly what I expected.
You can read the full Newsweek report here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
