According to a report from Newsweek's Bill Powell, Donald Trump spent the day of the anniversary of the Jan 6th insurrection obsessively watching TV coverage of President Joe Biden's speech -- as well as other proceedings about the events of that day -- and bitterly complained about what he was seeing on the screen to friends.
The former president was supposed to hold a press conference on Thursday as the new president was speaking but that called off on the advice of family and friends less than 48 hours before, leaving him on the sidelines.
Although the former president fired off a series of statements lashing out left and right, he reportedly fumed over the somber media coverage while sitting in at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
According to Powell, Trump reached out to friends to complain.
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"As President Joe Biden spoke on January 6, the first anniversary of the Capitol riots, Donald Trump was fuming. From his Mar-a-Lago estate, he watched as Biden lambasted him, blaming him directly for the unrest, branding him as nothing less than a threat to American democracy," the report states before adding, "Trump had known what was coming."
The report notes "He expected Biden and the media to savage him on the anniversary. Not because he deserved it–close friends and political allies of the former president all say he still angrily rejects any culpability for the January 6 riot—but because, as he told one friend, 'it's all they've got.'"
According to one Mar-a-Lago Trump friend, "[Trump said] they can't talk about anything else because the guy [Biden] is such a disaster."
The report notes that the twice-impeached former president didn't watch all of the coverage, with a Trump insider confiding that he did stop "to take some phone calls, and for lunch. But he watched most of it—and was furious."
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