"The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people," the Kentucky Republican announced in one of his closing floor addresses as majority leader.
McConnell further blamed the attack on "failures of institutions, protocols, and planning."
Demonstrators stormed the Capitol through a rally featuring Trump, who told the crowd the election was stolen. Trump told demonstrators to march to the Capitol to let lawmakers know they think he was the true winner of the election and not Democrat Joe Biden.
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The attack ended with five dead and dozens injured and caused damage throughout the building.
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McConnell has rebuffed pressure from Democrats to hold the impeachment trial before Trump vacates office, though he has told associates that he is uncertain on whether Trump should be convicted in the Senate for encouraging the protest.
Trump was impeached in the Democrat-led House last week in a 232-197 vote, with 10 Republicans voting in favor of impeachment.
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President Trump is the single president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.
McConnell’s comments further suggested that other leaders were responsible for the attack. Critics have urged some lawmakers, especially GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, to leave after they opposed key states’ electoral results.
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McConnell had praised Biden on his triumph in mid-December, more than a month after the Nov. 3 election.
Trump, who advised the crowd at a rally outside the White House to “fight like hell” and go to the Capitol to reverse the 2020 election, has maintained that his comments just before the riot were “totally appropriate.”
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In that speech, Trump repeated the allegation that he had been stripped of reelection by widespread electoral fraud. He once again pledged that he would never concede to Biden, and he encouraged his followers to go to the Capitol to “cheer on” Republican lawmakers who had vowed to object to the results.
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“We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump said.
In his comments Tuesday, McConnell said that “the last time the Senate convened, we had just reclaimed the Capitol from violent criminals who tried to stop Congress from doing our duty.”
“They tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government, which they did not like,” McConnell said.
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