Ivanka Trump repeatedly implored her father, then-President Donald Trump, to disavow his claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election as he watched news coverage of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, according to a forthcoming book.
Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and reporter Robert Costa write in their book “Peril,” out Sept. 21, that the then-first daughter told the 45th president three times to “let this thing go” and “let it go,” according to a report by CNN. Trump’s response is not mentioned in the report.
The book also recounts that retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, the national security adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, urged the president to “do a tweet” to calm the mob of Trump supporters who were currently menacing the vice president and members of Congress.
“You really should do a tweet,” Kellogg told Trump, according to Woodward and Costa. “You need to get a tweet out real quick, help control the crowd up there. This is out of control. They’re not going to be able to control this. Sir, they’re not prepared for it. Once a mob starts turning like that, you’ve lost it.”
The president, according to the authors, responded by saying “Yeah,” then “blinked and kept watching television.”
Hours earlier, Trump had fired up his supporters at a “Stop the Steal” rally within sight of the White House.
“We will never concede,” he vowed, adding, “You don’t concede when there’s theft.”
Trump then called on Pence to reject the election results when he presided over the congressional count later that day, telling the crowd: “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
As the chaos unfolded, Trump sent a pair of tweets that did not condemn the rioting.
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” one read. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
The other one read: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
Those posts, along with a video in which Trump told his supporters to “go home” and that he loved them, were later deleted shortly before Twitter permanently banned Trump from the social media platform.
Contrary to his daughter’s reported wishes, Trump has kept up his baseless claims that his failed bid for reelection was due to fraud. He has also sounded the same alarm, without evidence, about other elections — most recently Tuesday’s California gubernatorial recall.
“Does anybody really believe the California Recall Election isn’t rigged?” he asked in a statement Monday. “Millions and millions of Mail-In Ballots will make this just another giant Election Scam, no different, but less blatant, than the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!”