Trump was angry at Capitol mob only because they looked ‘cheap and poor’: report

A White House source speaking with The Mail on Sunday gives an inside look at US President Donald Trump’s failure to grasp the impact of the mob of his supporters raiding the Capitol last week, describing it as “the final hours of a deranged president in his bunker.”

Trump was livid, the unnamed source says, not at the attack itself and its far-reaching ramifications for the country’s democracy, but merely at the harm done to his own image.

“Trump was ‘apoplectic’ in embarrassment because the ‘white trash’ mob on screen made him look bad,” the report says.

The source is quoted as saying: “He was angry, not at the appalling crimes they were committing, but because he felt embarrassed. When they first stormed the Capitol he was enjoying it. These were ‘his people.’

“But when he saw pictures of the half-naked guy in the fur hat he started complaining they looked ‘cheap and poor.’ Even at one of the worst moments in American history, he was thinking about his image. He didn’t grasp the scale of the disaster.”

In this June 18, 2020 file photo, US President Donald Trump looks at his phone during a roundtable with governors on the reopening of America’s small businesses, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

The report says that for hours, Trump ignored calls — including by Vice President Mike Pence — to issue a televised address calling off the mob.

“Why should I? These people are my supporters,” he reportedly said.

When they tried to get Trump’s wife, Melania, to help, they were left “dumbfounded” by her reaction, the source says.

“The heart of US government was under siege, our very democracy on the line, but Mrs. Trump was calmly arranging porcelain figurines” for a photoshoot for a new coffee table book about presidential artifacts, he says.

“She said nothing. She remained silent and carried on arranging a vase for the shoot. She checked out of this presidency and her marriage a long time ago,” the source claims.