'Horrified' Trump official spent five hours trying to make him walk back tweet about shooting looters

In newly released depositions from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots, former White House press official Alyssa Farah Griffin revealed that it took her five whole hours to get former President Donald Trump to walk back an infamous tweet he wrote about shooting looters.

As flagged by attorney George Conway, Griffin told the committee that she was initially horrified when Trump responded to scenes of violence in anti-police brutality protests in June of 2020 by tweeting, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts!"

"I mean, I and every living, breathing person was horrified by it," she told the committee. "I walked into his office -- and we were getting crushed -- you know, even Fox News was like, 'This is terrible.' So I walked into the dining room and said, like, 'Sir... you need to walk this back.'"

She then proceeded to show him clips of Fox News personalities criticizing him for pouring gas on an already tense situation.

After this, Griffin tried to work with him to walk back the tweet.

"I brought him... the first walk back, which was along the lines of, what I meant to say is, when there's looting, inevitably violence follows, and violence is terrible," she said. "And he said, 'No, no, no. That's not what I meant. What I meant is... when the looting starts, people are going to get shot.' And I'm like, oh, great."

She said she then spent the next five hours crafting a tweet that he would agree to send out, although Griffin acknowledged that the tweet wasn't exactly "helpful" but "it was at least somewhat deescalatory."