Wisconsin congressman Scott Fitzgerald won’t blame Donald Trump for inciting the crowd that stormed into the US Capitol last week, an episode resulted in the deaths of 5 people.
“It’s just hard for me to believe right now, that that entire crowd was somehow fired up just by the speeches of the day to take that action. I’m not going to say there wasn’t an element of them, and they might be supporters of the president, they might not be. But I think that’s why you’ve got to do a full investigation.”
In an interview Thursday with WisPolitics, the newly elected 5th District Republican said it would be “troubling” if some Trump supporters interpreted the president’s fiery speech the morning of January 6 as incitement to storm the Capitol.
“Yeah I think he definitely fired up that crowd in a way, that some people may have believed he meant ‘got to the Capitol and intimidate.’ And if that’s the way those people perceived it. That’s troubling. That certainly is troubling.”
Fitzgerald said it’s wrong to assume that the people who participated in last week’s violence are representative all Trump voters. He said he attended numerous Trump rallies.
“This summer, some of the events, the campaign events. Boat parades on Okauchee Lake with hundreds and hundreds of boats and people. I mean they’re such great people that supported the president, and they would come together for these rallies. They’re normal Wisconsinites.”
But he also accused some Democrats of making that claim. “It’s being used, because I heard it on the floor of the House being used, to lump everybody together into one category and say, ‘all 75 million people that supported Trump or voted for Trump, you’re terrible people,’ and that’s a scary thing too.”
