Mark Meadows, the onetime chief of staff to former President Trump, said Monday that Trump moved swiftly to curb the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — a claim contradicted by the events of the day, when Trump waited hours to urge his supporters to stand down.
In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Meadows said the critics of Trump’s response to the attack, including the lawmakers on the special congressional committee investigating the siege, are merely longtime Trump adversaries attempting to rewrite history so that it “fits their narrative.”
“One of the things that is coming out more and more clearly each and every day is that everyone condemned what happened in terms of the breach of security on the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Meadows said.
He went on to argue that Trump had requested thousands of National Guard troops to be deployed on Jan. 6, suggesting the violence would have been prevented if only the Pentagon had complied. And he accused Democrats of cherry-picking the narrative of Trump’s actions that day “to spin some nefarious purpose.”
“At the end of the day, they’re going to find that not only did the president act, but he acted quickly,” Meadows told Hannity.
Emails and text messages that Meadows submitted to the select committee, however, tell a different story.
Meadows, as Trump’s right-hand man, had a front-row seat to the president’s response as the violence at the Capitol unfolded. And the trove of documents that Meadows turned over to investigators reveals that he was fielding desperate messages from Trump’s eldest son, GOP lawmakers and the leading pundits at Fox News — including Hannity — urging Meadows to convince Trump to tell his supporters to end the siege and go home.
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