New York, July 22 (UNI) The much-awaited Thursday’s testimonies of former Trump’s press aide Sarah Matthews and former Deputy National Security Advisor Mathew Pottinger got underway with both blaming former US President Donald Trump for inaction to quell the mob and resorting to shocking action on January 6 of trying to coerce his Vice-President Mike Pence not to certify 2020 presidential election against the advice of most of the West wing top aides.
Matthews said in live testimony that Trump’s refusal to act and call off the mob on January 6 was “indefensible” and she decided to resign that evening.
She added that she was “shocked” to see that Trump began his video statement at 4:17 p.m. “by pushing the lie that there was a stolen election”.
“And as the video went on, I felt a small sense of relief because he finally told these people to go home,” she said.“But that was immediately followed up by him saying, ” “We love you. You’re very special”. And that was disturbing to me because he didn’t distinguish between those that peacefully attended his speech earlier that day and those that we watched cause violence at the Capitol.”
“As a spokesperson for him, I knew that I would be asked to defend that and his refusal to act and call off the mob that day, and his refusal to condemn the violence was indefensible, and so I knew that I would be resigning that evening.”
Matthews said another Trump aide had stated that condemning the violence would be “handing a win to the media”.She added in a live testimony that a conversation unfolded in the White House Press office on January 6 about Trump’s latest two tweets being insufficient.
“A colleague suggested that the President shouldn’t condemn the violence because they thought it would be ‘handing a win to the media,’” Matthews said during the hearing.
“I disagreed. I thought that we should condemn violence and condemn it unequivocally.
