Appearing Thursday on VICE on Showtime, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller accused former President Donald Trump of being responsible for Jan. 6’s deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol roughly one month after Congress acquitted Trump on a charge of inciting the riot.
A transcript is as follows:
SEB WALKER: Did you listen to the president’s speech in the morning? What did you make of it what you heard the kinds of things he was saying?
CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Concerning.
WALKER: When you heard him say, “We’re gonna walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” “take our country back,” that is what was concerning to you?
MILLER: Sure, yeah. But by the same token, there had been a lot of rhetoric spewed over the previous bunch of years.
WALKER: But on this day, more than any other, when the vote is being certified in Congress, that must of set alarms bells off ringing in your head.
MILLER: Yes.
WALKER: Do you think the president was responsible for what happened on the 6th?
MILLER: I don’t know, but it’s seems cause and effect. Yeah. Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened. So yes, the question is, did he know he was enraging the crowd to do that? I don’t know.
President Trump told attendees of the January 6 protest to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”