Live updates | ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’

The House committee investigating the Capitol riot has shown never-before-seen outtakes from a speech prepared for then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 7, 2021, in which he was supposed to say that the election he lost to Joe Biden was over.

But Trump is seen in the video as bristling at that line – that the 2020 election was in fact decided and over. In a room of supporters that included his daughter Ivanka Trump, the president is heard saying, “I don’t want to say the election is over.” The clips that were left on the cutting room floor show a president unwilling to admit defeat even hours after his supporters violently breached the Capitol to try to stop the electoral count in his name. Trump is seen trying to take out several lines of the script he believed went too far.

In the outtakes, Trump is visibly angry. At one point he hits his hand on the podium — as he works through the prepared remarks, with Ivanka Trump and others heard chiming in with suggestions.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)