Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah: Trump is 'directly responsible' for Capitol riots

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah rebuked President Trump over this week's Capitol riots in a new interview, calling him "directly responsible."

Farah, who resigned as White House communications director in December, in an interview with Politico described the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol building this week as a "boiling point showing that misleading the public has consequences," and she placed blame on Trump for his repeated false claims that he won the 2020 election.

"I certainly fault the protesters — frankly, we should call them terrorists, but I fundamentally fault our elected leadership who allowed these people to believe that their election was stolen from them," Farah said. "The president and certain advisors around him are directly responsible."

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Farah went on to say that Trump "could have saved lives" with a "strong, declarative, forceful statement" condemning the violence on Wednesday, but instead, he "allowed lives to be put in danger." She also told Politico that despite Trump's false claims that the election was fraudulent, the results shouldn't have been a surprise seeing as they "almost perfectly aligned" with internal polling — and Trump himself realized he lost in November.

"When I was still in the White House in late November, he knew that he had lost," she said of Trump. "And it was something that was almost like tacitly acknowledged, like we're going to make this painful, but we know what happened. And then, something turned. And I don't know if it was the wrong advisers getting to him with bad information or what."

While it's unclear whether Trump might attempt another run for the White House, Farah said she wouldn't support him "at this time" because "our country needs something different." Still, asked whether she still respects the president, she responded, "I do." Read the full interview at Politico.