“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” the tweet, posted at 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, stated. “He put a target on his own vice president’s back,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said after sharing the message. A tweet from former US President Donald Trump is displayed on a screen during a hearing by the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the US Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on July 21, 2022. Witness Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser, said it was in that moment that he decided to resign. “It looked like fuel being poured on the fire,” he told the committee. “I did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol.” Witness and ex-staffer Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary, said she thought the tweet “was the last thing that was needed in that moment” from Trump. “He should have been telling these people to go home, and to leave, and to condemn the violence that we were seeing,” she said. “For him to tweet out the message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire, and making it much worse.”
