The former president falsely claims nobody was charged for deaths in Black Lives Matter protests.
In his half-hour sit-down with three journalists at NABJ, the former president and Republican presidential nominee unleashed his usual litany of falsehoods, ranging from a phony story about the ex-governor of Virginia executing a baby after birth to an absurd claim that he “saved” historically Black colleges and universities. To a Black audience, he yet again bragged he did more for Black people than any president since Abraham Lincoln — earning the instant rejoinder (which he ignored) from ABC News’s Rachel Scott: “Better than President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act?”
Rather than repeat ourselves, we have provided links to previous fact checks at the end of this report.
Instead we will focus on a fresh claim he made. When asked about pardoning people convicted of violence during the Jan. 6 attacks — he said he would — he resorted to whataboutism. He asserted that people died in Seattle and Minneapolis during the social justice protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020 — and nothing happened to those people.The Facts
As part of his argument, Trump falsely claimed that “nobody died.” A Senate report said that “seven individuals, including three law enforcement officers, ultimately lost their lives” in connection with the attack, four of them “that day.” Four were Trump supporters — one shot by a U.S. Capitol police officer as she tried to climb through a broken window that led to the Speaker’s Lobby, two of heart attacks and one from amphetamine intoxication. Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, collapsed at his desk after the attack and died a day later. The District’s chief medical examiner concluded that Sicknick had suffered two strokes nearly eight hours after being sprayed with a chemical irritant. Two other officers died by suicide within days of the attack.
Trump also claimed that just a few days ago there was a “horrible attack on the Capitol” by pro-Palestinian protesters — and “they fought with them much more openly than I saw on January 6th.
