Former Virginia Republican Denver Riggleman told CNN The State of the Union on Sunday that he viewed the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol as a coup attempt by former President Trump.
The big picture: Rigelman said people around Trump “realized” what they were doing when they repeated “propaganda” and “conspiracy theories” that preceded the riot and put “madness in people’s heads.”
Riglman, a former adviser to the January 6th election commission, said he no longer considered himself a Republican. “I think the party left me some time ago,” he said.
- “What I saw behind the scenes repulsed me even more,” he said, adding that the party had “moved away from conservative principles” to a cult of personality around Trump.
What they say: “When you see him behind the door, when you see the data, when you see the investigation … it’s absolutely stunning, this cult of personality, but also the belief systems that I don’t think is truly conservative can follow in any moment, “Rigelman said.
- “What people have embraced is absolutely insane. If you look at Stop Theft, if you look at, you know, some of the problems with COVID, with the conspiracy theories about vaccination.
- “When you look at it all, the fact is that a lot of it has been pushed by people around the president,” he said, referring to Trump.
Go deeper: The January 6 panel calls into question the Justice Ministry’s “puzzling” decision on Trump’s best aides
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