Strategic ambiguity: "things and events"--he doesn't give us a label for them. He want to say that they are justified protests, not unjustified treason, sedition, and insurrection. https://twitter.com/MelissaJPeltier/status/1346961550133719044

From that ambiguity he justifies (condones) the insurrection as what happens (passive voice, he didn't incite it!) when a "sacred landslide victory"--note the use of the Biblical, that's no accident. It's part of his hero narrative to claim that he was purified to save the nation

& it's also fascist. He has sacrificed so much for the nation and in return the nation owes him its loyalty.

But his followers were also deprived of victory! They are "great patriots" (ad populum + American Exceptionalism) & the plot has deprived them viciously, badly, unfairly.

So many adverbs to describe this terrible conspiracy against the scared!

Though his great patriots (not insurrectionists) have long suffered, Trump urges them to go in love and peace and remember their suffering & victory.

So there's a lot going on! It's an apologia for his role in today's insurrection (a defense of what it was, who did it, why it was done, and Trump's role). It's primary (unstated) strategy is denial (it didn't happen) through differentiation (it wasn't what you thought).

One way to think of it is gaslighting, it isn't what you think. Don't believe your own lying eyes. The apparent narrative isn't the true narrative. Trump is a frequent gaslighter.

He has constantly relied on that same apologia (self-defense) strategy: the combo of denial and differentiation.

He invokes his favorite fascist hero narrative & his preferred way of addressing his supporters.

He framing it all this way to give outs to his insurrectionists, himself, his supporters at home, and his supporters in the Republican Party.

So, according to Trump what we saw today wasn't a riot & Trump didn't incite an insurrection (it was & he did), but was an <undefined thing> that is a reasonable response of patriots who've been deprived their sacred victory by a plot.

Trump is trying to wash the blood from his hands.

cc: @edbott

And here's the tweet in case it disappears.