A mob of President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to block the Congress from affirming the outcome of the 2020 election in president-elect Joe Biden's favor.
In the aftermath of the attack, a video shared by Donald Trump Jr. was widely circulated on social media as "evidence" that the president and his aides were watching live footage of the siege from a private tent party.
Trump's Riot Watch Party
"The Trump crime family watched & supervised the violence on the Capitol from their own "Situation Room," a Twitter user captioned the footage.
The clip shows Trump Jr. recording himself with a front-facing camera as Laura Branigan's 1982 pop hit "Gloria" plays in the background. The screen then flips over to the rear camera to show the president watching footage of a crowd of supporters on several TV screens in front of him.
Trump was surrounded by family members Ivanka and Eric Trump in what appeared to be a large outdoor tent. Trump's close aides including Trump Jr.'s girlfriend and adviser for Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also made an appearance in the video. Watch the clip below:
Fact-Check
While the video was indeed authentic and was filmed on the same day the Trump mob breached the Capitol, Trump was not watching a livestream of supporters breaking into and vandalizing the Capitol.
The footage captured the moments before Trump addressed supporters at the "Save America Rally" at Ellipse Park (south of the White House and a 20-minute walk from the Capitol). According to Trump Jr.'s Facebook history, the since-deleted video was shared on his official account under the title, "A Little Backstage Time With POTUS Before His Speech."
According to video footage of the rally shared by Bloomberg, Branigan's "Gloria" was blaring through the loudspeakers just before Trump took the stage, which suggests that the tent party may have been a backstage event that showed Trump minutes before he made his headline appearance.
Moreover, the TV screens in the video showed a crowd of people in front of a stage and slogans that read "SAVE AMERICA MARCH" and "THE BEST IS YET TO COME!" There was no sign of any footage from the Capitol, where the violence and chaos ensued.
