GOP Rep Defends Trump By Saying Insurrection Was Actually Planned In His Own Hotel Room

Cleanup in Aisle Gipper!

Yesterday a sitting congressman went on CNN to announce that Donald Trump couldn't possibly have incited the January 6 invasion of Congress because the invasion was planned earlier that day in the congressman's very own hotel room.

 MIC DROP. 

Noting that Giménez had only voted to reject the Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona, and that Biden would have won the election anyway even if both states had flipped, CNN host Erin Burnett asked if he regretted feeding into a false narrative that the election was stolen.

"Do you have any regrets about how your vote fed into what Trump was saying. He linked those things together — his lie. That that could be contributing to Republicans refusing to accept a legitimate president?" she asked.

Saying that he had "no regrets," Giménez pivoted immediately to defending Trump from charges that he incited the January 6 riot by MAGA loons determined to thwart certification of the election results.

"I voted not to impeach the president because I didn't think he incited the events that happened," he insisted. "I know for a fact that I saw people in my hotel room that were saying they were going to do something at two o'clock. And that happened at nine o'clock in the morning."

At which point the entire internet rose up to shout HENGHHHHH??? Why would a sitting congressman be hanging out in his hotel room with people plotting to "do something at two o'clock?" And how could he possibly think this would bolster the argument that Donald Trump's lies about the election bore no relationship to the violence that took place that day? The fact that people showed up ready to do violence isn't quite the own the congressman thinks it is, TBQH.

Perhaps Rep. Giménez was simply disoriented from whiplash after endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 when he was mayor of Miami, then pivoting to full MAGA after he was term-limited out and forced to run for Congress. Luckily his chief of staff Alex Ferro swooped in to clarify what his boss meant to say .

 CNN reports:

Ferro said Gimenez meant to say that the activity in question occurred in the lobby of the hotel, not his room. It was Ferro who initially picked up on the disturbing comments.

According to Ferro, the man who made the remark about storming the FBI did so "with passion in his voice."

"It didn't sit well with me," Ferro added.

"I could have sworn I heard 'we're gonna storm the FBI building,'" Ferro continued.

To his credit, Ferro says that he immediately notified the Capitol Police and FBI that there was a "man in tactical gear" hanging out in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency chatting up the assembled Trump supporters about his plans to invade federal buildings. He did not explain how this works as a defense of the former president, who summoned the would-be invader with promises that it would be "wild" and lies about a stolen election.

Nor did Ferro elaborate on his boss Giménez's role in nurturing the mistaken impression that the election could somehow be overturned. Did he walk up to them and say, "Guys, I'm a congressman, and even if we flipped Arizona and Pennsylvania, Biden would still win, so keep it clean, okay?" Seems unlikely!

In summary and in conclusion, Rep. Giménez was hanging with insurrectionists in his hotel room or possibly his hotel lobby. And he overheard someone make threats to federal property, or possibly his COS did. And even though all the assembled revelers at Ye Olde breakfast bar were Trump supporters summoned to block certification of an election they believed was stolen, none of what took place was Trump's fault. Or Congressman Giménez's, because he's a faithful public servant with no responsibility to ensure that the public knows the truth about their own elections.

OPEN THREAD.

[ CNN ]

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