Thompson on elections: ‘You don’t tear the place up if you lose’

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, took an apparent swipe at former President Trump, saying that in an election, “you don’t tear the place up if you lose.”

During an an interview published Friday with CNN, Thompson, 74, talked about growing up in Mississippi and the struggles he faced in his political career.

“My daddy died when I was in 10th grade, but he never had a chance to vote for his son to be elected, I think, is a sense of how far we’ve come,” Thompson told CNN’s Gloria Borger.

“The bragging rights as Americans is you can support the candidate of your choice, and sometimes you win, and sometime you lose, but you don’t tear the place up if you lose,” he added.

Thompson was referring to the Capitol riot, during which a mob of Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol and tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election.

Before the riot took place, Trump urged supporters during an appearance on the National Mall to head to the Capitol building and demand that the certification be halted.

During Thompson’s interview with Borger, she asked him if he believed that Trump had “provoked and led the insurrection and then was applauding it … as it occurred.”

“I believe that Donald Trump was the puppet master. He allowed with his rhetoric people to be bamboozled into believing that the election was stolen,” Thompson replied.

Thompson’s comments come as the committee gets ready to hold its first public hearing on the Capitol riot on June 9 at 8 p.m.

The committee said in a notice about the public hearing that it “will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”

In addition to the committee’s news, the Justice Department charged former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro this week for refusing to cooperate with the committee.

The department is reportedly declining to charge former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, former deputy chief of staff to Trump.

Thompson and the committee’s vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), called the Justice Department’s decision to not charge Scavino or Meadows “puzzling” in a joint statement.

The Hill has reached out to a spokesperson for Trump for comment.

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