Former President Donald Trump described the Jan. 6 Capitol rally that later broke into deadly violence as a "love fest." His comments came at an interview with Fox News on Sunday after his keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.
Fox News host Steve Hilton asked Trump what he thought of the protests before his supporters barged into the Capitol building. Trump called the rally "massive" and a "love fest."
"That rally was massive. ...It was tremendous numbers of people. Not the Capitol, I'm talking about the rally itself. And it was a love fest. It was a beautiful thing," Trump told Hilton.
However, he proceeded to blame House speaker Nancy Pelosi and said he requested the Department of Defense to deploy 10,000 national guards at the Capitol ahead of the rally.
"They took that number — from what I understand — they gave it to the people at the Capitol which is controlled by Pelosi and I heard they rejected it because they didn't think it'll look good," Trump said, adding that it was a "double standard" of critics to only call out the Capitol violence.
"When you see Washington burning and when you see Seattle burning and Portland burning and all these other places burning with Antifa, and the radical left, nothing seems to happen," Trump said.
Earlier in the afternoon, Trump gave a speech at the CPAC and continued to allege voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. This was his first speech since leaving the White House in January. Trump ruled out the possibility of forming a new political party calling it "fake news."
"Wouldn't that be brilliant? Let's start a new party, so we can divide our vote and never win," Trump said jokingly. "We have the Republican Party. It's going to unite and be stronger than ever before."
Trump even hinted that he may run in 2024 saying: "Actually you know they just lost the White House. But who knows — who knows? I may even decide to beat them for a third time, okay?"
However, he took to the opportunity to criticize President Joe Biden saying that the U.S. went from "America first to America last."
