Former United States Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who has held the acting position since former President Donald Trump sacked Mark Esper, has assured that the mogul incited the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 with the speech he gave. before them hours before.
In a fragment of an interview that Miller has given to VICE, which will be broadcast on Sunday, the former head of the Pentagon questions whether “someone would have marched to the Capitol and invaded it without the president’s speech.” “I think it’s pretty definite that that hadn’t happened, so yeah,” he ditch.
However, Miller points out that “he is not sure” if Trump was “aware” that his speech could have “such extreme” consequences, but insists that he knows that the incident would not have happened if he had not delivered the speech. In this sense, recalling the events of that day, he points out that, when he heard some of his comments, he found them “worrying” and that they “sound the alarms.”
“It seems cause and effect,” he says, alluding to the speech and the incident on Capitol Hill, which left five dead. “The question is: did you know you were infuriating people to do that? I don’t know,” says the former defense secretary, who was criticized for his role in responding to the assault, among other things for the time it took to deploy to the National Guard. As acting secretary of defense that day, Miller was in charge of the Army’s response.
“We will fight. We will fight like demons. If you don’t fight like demons, you will not have a country anymore,” Trump told his supporters in a speech delivered on January 6, which lasted 70 minutes.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as Congress was holding a joint session to ratify Joe Biden’s victory in the November 3 presidential election. The former president repeatedly rejected the election result, stating that a “fraud” had taken place, although without providing evidence in this regard.
At least 280 people have been arrested for allegedly being involved in the assault on the Capitol and charges have been brought against more than 300.
