“I hope he has recovered because as you know, he fell off his bicycle. No, I’m serious. I hope he’s okay. Fell off a bicycle. I make this pledge to you today — I will never, ever ride a bicycle.”

— Donald Trump, quoted by Business Standard.

Former President Donald Trump called into Newsmax to defend attendees of his now-infamous Jan. 6, 2021 rally that turned into a riot at the Capitol.

Said Trump: “It was the largest group I think that I’ve ever seen or made a speech to. I’ve never seen anything like it and there they were well behaved. So many, so many people. Nobody ever talks about that.”

“The irony is that Pence was arguably the primary enabler of Trump… He was the mainstream traditional conservative Republican who would go to donors and not just defend Trump and his policies, but with a straight face insist that Donald J. Trump was a good man.”

— GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, quoted by the New York Times.

Former Vice President Mike Pence discussed President Joe Biden committing “so many falsehoods” with former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow on Fox Business:

KUDLOW: Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame, and I want to add to that, commits so many falsehoods? I’m being very polite here, calling it falsehoods – falsehoods, you know, on any given day. He’s out there saying stuff that just ain’t true. Have you ever seen anything like that?

PENCE: Never in my lifetime. I said today that there has never been a time in my life where a president was more disconnected from the American people than we see today.

“With the Justice Department and Jan. 6 committee taking a close look at Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he and his cronies could certainly use a fall guy, and it looks like they’ve found their patsy: right-wing lawyer John Eastman,” Rolling Stone reports.

“Eastman worked for Trump as the attorney devised legal strategies to overturn the election to keep the outgoing president in power. But, in recent weeks, Trump has confided to those close to him that he sees no reason to publicly defend Eastman.”

“The ex-president is also deeply annoyed with Eastman and all the negative ‘attention’ and media coverage that the lawyer’s work has brought Trump and his inner sanctum, including during the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill.”

Entirely predictable, but Trump better hope Eastman doesn’t flip.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told NBC News that former President Donald Trump’s vitriol toward the Jan. 6 select committee and former Vice President Mike Pence is tantamount to a confession about his role in the Capitol riot.

Washington Post: “At the time, the gatherings seemed a slapdash, desperate attempt to mimic President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede.”

“But internal campaign emails and memos reveal that the convening of the fake electors appeared to be a much more concerted strategy, intended to give Vice President Mike Pence a reason to declare the outcome of the election was somehow in doubt on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was to preside over the congressional counting of the electoral college votes.”

“The documents show Trump’s team pushed ahead and urged the electors to meet — then pressured Pence to cite the alternate Trump slates — even as various Trump lawyers acknowledged privately they did not have legal validity and the gatherings had not been in compliance with state laws.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CNN the January 6 Committee will reveal evidence that Donald Trump was involved in a failed effort to overturn the election by appointing pro-Trump electors in states won by Joe Biden.

Said Schiff: “We’ll also again show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme. And we’ll show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn’t go along with this plan to either call legislatures back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said that he believes Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riots on January 6 amount to “seditious conspiracy” and “criminal involvement by a president,” The Guardian reports.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds 58% of Americans think Donald Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot.

In addition, 58% of Americans think Trump bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility for the attack on the Capitol.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House aide under President Trump, says that she heard Trump admit privately that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, CNN reports.

“A day after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault illustrated the serious danger that rioters posed to Mike Pence, former President Donald Trump unleashed a new attack on the man who had served him as vice president, criticizing him for refusing to interfere with the Electoral College certification of the 2020 presidential contest,” the New York Times reports.

The Washington Post reports Trump referred to Pence as a “human conveyor belt” for his role in moving the election process forward, saying that he had considered labeling him as a “robot.”

Former President Trump said on Friday that he would look “very, very seriously” at pardoning those charged in connection with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if he ran for and became president again, The Hill reports.

Andrew Sullivan: “There are simply no precedents in history for this kind of assault on the core principles of the American republic. None. And there is no precedent for a president, having been exposed as a fantasist, to carry on, insisting that his fever dream remains reality, attacking the very legitimacy of our democracy, day after day. The idea that he could run again — or again become president — could only be entertained by those who wish to end the American experiment.”

“Peruse the 12-page letter Trump put out in response to the hearings. It is the work of someone with no grip on reality, absurd lie after lie after lie, barely literate, the kind of thing you’d think was written by a lunatic if you received it in the mail. Any other president would have conceded on election night. Others with a real case (unlike Trump’s) — Nixon in 1960, Gore in 2000 — knew what their duty was. They cared more about the republic than themselves — a concept simply outside Trump’s cognition. In four years, he never acted as a president. He only ever acted as Trump.”

“In the bitter end, he was just a man with a mob. Not a Republican. Not a politician. Not a president. Not a member of any political party but his own cult. A mindless, raging, bullying thug. The hearings have methodically and calmly revealed this, masterfully led by a Republican, Liz Cheney, through testimony supplied by Republican after Republican witness.”

“Former President Trump said Friday that former Vice President Mike Pence ‘did not have the courage to act,’ referring to Pence’s refusal to overturn the 2020 election results,” Axios reports.

Said Trump: “I never called Mike Pence a wimp. Mike Pence had a chance to be great.”

He added: “He had a chance to be frankly historic, but just like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, and I say it sadly because I like him, but Mike did not have the courage to act.”

“Former President Donald Trump’s political operation and Republican Party committees have paid over $12.6 million to individuals and firms that organized the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol since the start of the 2020 election,” OpenSecrets reports.

“The full extent of the payments from the Trump campaign political operations to rally organizers during the 2020 election and around the rally in early 2021 remains a mystery because the campaign’s top vendor was American Made Media Consultants LLC, a firm created by Trump campaign aides to act as a clearinghouse for its spending.”

“Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee routed more than $771 million through the firm, hiding details of those payments.”

“Walmart is the latest retailer to pull MyPillow products from its stores as the company’s CEO Mike Lindell continues to claim that the 2020 election was rigged against former President Trump,” Axios reports.