Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney called former President Trump’s recent comments on the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol “manifestly false.”
Speaking during an interview on CNN Newsroom, Mulvaney was responding to Trump’s comments on Fox News on Thursday, during which the former commander in chief said the rioters posed “zero threat.”
“I was surprised to hear the president say that … Clearly, there were people who were behaving themselves and then there were people who absolutely were not,” Mulvaney said.
“But to come out and say that everybody was fine and there was no risk is just — that’s manifestly false,” he said. “People died. Other people were severely injured. To say there was no risk is just wrong.”
Mulvaney further said that as he was watching the riot live, there was a “split screen” of violent demonstrators and those who stayed within the velvet ropes of the Capitol rotunda. Still, he said that even the peaceful protesters should not have been at the Capitol that day.
“There are videos of folks behaving themselves and protesting peacefully. But they should not have been there. And it’s not right to say there was no risk. I don’t know how you can say that when people were killed,” he said.
Trump made his comments on Thursday as he was talking about the security measures that had been taken around the Capitol since the riot, such as the protective fencing.
“I think it’s disgraceful — it looks, for the world to watch — absolutely, it’s a political maneuver that they’re doing. It was zero threat right from the start, it was zero threat,” he said.
Hundreds of people have been charged in connection with the Capitol riot that left five dead and delayed the certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory. Mulvaney resigned his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland following the riot.