In a Tuesday night interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, Donald Trump Jr., son of former President Donald Trump, called himself "the son of a billionaire" and said he is more in touch with the "pulse of the American people" than Congress.
Donald Trump Jr. was brought onto Hannity's show to share his impression of the Senate impeachment trial against his father for allegedly inciting the January 6 insurrection in which rioters ransacked the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump Jr. agreed with Hannity's assertion, made earlier in the program, that Congress should not focus on impeachment but rather on other issues facing the country, like the vaccination rollout and creating jobs.
"As always, the Democrats are overplaying their hand," Trump Jr. said. "They don't get it because they live in their little echo chambers. And I understand the irony of the son of a billionaire from Manhattan having a better pulse of the American people than the people chosen by those people to represent them in Congress, but the Congress is clueless.... because they have their lackeys in the media telling them they're right about all of their nonsensical attacks."
Earlier in the program, Hannity said that Democrats are contradictory in their beliefs that Trump incited the insurrection with his January 6 speech and that the insurrection was organized for weeks before it occurred. But the Democrats' aforementioned claims aren't mutually exclusive: They contend that Trump's speech and his campaign's aid in organizing the rally both incited the insurrection that followed.
Trump's re-election campaign paid more than $2.7 million to several individuals and firms who helped to organize the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the violent January 6 insurrection, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Hannity then blamed Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California for not alerting the House Sergeant-at-Arms about reports of a possible attack, even though law enforcement and the FBI had heard reports of possible violence for weeks beforehand.
The Capitol police officers who bore the brunt of the January 6 insurrection have blamed their departmental leadership, and not Pelosi or the House Sergeant-at-Arms, for failing to adequately prepare them.
Furthermore, the Capitol police's request for National Guard troop members to serve as backup during the insurrection was delayed because the commander of the D.C. National Guard, Major General William J. Walker, required additional approval from the Pentagon before he could dispatch such forces.
Lastly, Hannity mentioned that Trump, during his January 6 speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally encouraged his followers to march "peacefully and patriotically" to the Capitol.
While this is true, and video of Trump's statement was omitted from Democrats' video of the day's events shown during the Senate impeachment trial, Democrats have highlighted other violent imagery and baseless claims Trump made during the speech, telling his followers to "fight" because, he said, he had actually won the election in a landslide, but the victory was being stolen from him.
"We will never concede, it doesn't happen," Trump said at the rally. "You don't concede when there's theft involved.... We fight like Hell and if you don't fight like Hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
Newsweek reached out to the Trump Organization for comment.
