US: House committee shows video of Trump refusing to acknowledge election end

Members of the House Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riots are unequivocally holding Donald Trump responsible for the violence. Lawmakers will also put forth recommendations to prevent another such incident.

The House committee investigating the Capitol riot has shown never-before-seen outtakes from a speech prepared for the then-President Donald Trump on January 7, 2021, in which he was supposed to say that the election, in which he lost to Joe Biden, was over. However, he is seen in the video as bristling at that line— that the 2020 election was, in fact, decided and over.

In a room of supporters that included his daughter Ivanka Trump, the president is heard saying that he didn't "want to say the election is over”.

In general, these clips left on the cutting room floor show a president unwilling to admit defeat even hours after his supporters violently breached the Capitol, in order to try and stop the electoral count in his name.

Trump is also seen trying to take out several lines of the script he believed went too far. At about this time, Trump is visibly angry, and at one point, he hits his hand on the podium as he works through the prepared remarks, with Ivanka Trump and others chiming in with suggestions.

Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger also testified at Thursday's primetime hearing, that he told his boss, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, that he was submitting his resignation on January 6, 2021. He agreed to stay on until O’Brien could return to Washington. On the morning of January 7, Pottinger left the White House for the last time, he said.

Pottinger testified that he didn’t want to “leave his chair empty”, so he stayed through the night until he was able to hand off his national security duties to another staffer.

He added he was concerned that foreign adversaries would see the chaos as an opportunity to test the US:

“I think it emboldened our enemies by having given ammunition to the narrative that our system of government doesn’t work."

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