Pressed by a Fox News interviewer to acknowledge his lies about subjects including Springfield, Ohio, and January 6, former president Donald Trump claimed complete and unlikely ignorance: “I have not heard that at all,” he said at one point. Later: “I have no idea.”
It’s a curious rhetorical strategy that the GOP nominee for president has deployed repeatedly in recent weeks, when outright denial appears to fall short. He has also claimed, for instance, to “know nothing” about Project 2025, to not “know anything” about a false endorsement posted to his personal Truth Social account in early October, and to not know “the situation” surrounding Mark Robinson, the recently disgraced (and Trump-endorsed) Republican candidate for North Carolina governor.
But Sunday’s avowals of ignorance really strained credulity even by Trump standards. Howard Kurtz, host of the Fox News show Media Buzz, pressed the former president on his claim that the January 6 Capitol protests represented a “day of love,” reminding the Republican nominee for president that hundreds of people have now been charged with rioting and assaulting police officers. “There was nobody killed here—nobody had guns here either,” Trump said, after waxing poetic about the size of the January 6 crowd.
“There were people with guns,” Kurtz corrected.
“Well, really? I’d like to know,” Trump said. “You mean in the rally or they had some guns at their home?”
“At the rally,” Kurtz told him. This is not exactly arcane information: According to the Justice Department, and as of early August, 171 January 6 defendants had been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon. “Really?” Trump said. “Well, I have not heard that at all. No, I don’t think so. They had no guns. They had no guns. That was peaceful and patriotic.” The conversation moved on.
Kurtz later urged Trump, without success, to acknowledge the reality in Springfield, Ohio, where he and his running mate JD Vance have repeatedly and falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants stole and ate their neighbors’ pets. “I don’t know if it’s true or not true. I read something—” Trump began, before Kurtz interrupted him to clarify that his claims were unambiguously not true.
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The post Trump, Confronted About Past Lies: I Know Nothing About That appeared first on Vanity Fair.
