During the opening moments of the first day of Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate, Democrats played a striking video montage of his speech just before the attacks, cut in with scenes of the mob taking his words as inspiration and storming the Capitol as legislators certified the election.
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"We risk allowing January 6th to become our future," House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin said. “What will the January exception mean to future generations if you grant it? I'll show you.”
The video begins with the former president vowing, “We will stop the steal,” before promising his supporters they would all go together to the Capitol.
Once there, he told them, “When you catch someone in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules,” and “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
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The video mixes in the president’s words with scenes of the mob attacking police officers and saying directly they are following the ex-president’s wishes, chanting “Fight for Trump!” and telling a Capitol police officer inside the building “There’s a f****** million of us out there, and we are listening to Trump—you boss!”
It also shows the shocking moment a protester, Ashli Babbitt, is shot head by a Capitol police officer while trying to climb through the smashed window of a door leading to the offices of the Speaker of the House.
