By Emily Aiken / The Associated PressThe White House has defended its decision to include a video clip of former President Donald Trump at his inauguration, despite the outcry over its inclusion of the man who led the charge in calling for a boycott of the inauguration.
Trump and his family are also set to address a crowd of roughly 3,000 people on Saturday at the White House.
The clip includes Trump speaking in his first address to a joint session of Congress and an excerpt of his remarks from a rally earlier this year in Washington.
It includes a statement that the speech was “in response to the ongoing violence against peaceful protesters and those who seek to peacefully protest,” according to the White and Congressional Black Caucus websites.
In the video, Trump says: “The people of this country have a right to know what is going on with their president.
I am the only one who can stop this.”
In a statement to CNN, the White Senate press secretary said the video was “not a statement of fact but rather a statement by the President.”
The clip of Trump, who will address the joint session as the Republican nominee, is an excerpt from an address in which he called for a nationwide boycott of next year’s inauguration, a day after he said he was withdrawing his support from then-candidate Donald Trump.
He said his decision was “based on the false claims made by his opponents and his own words about his supporters,” according the WhiteHouse.com.
On Saturday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that “the White House takes these kinds of comments very seriously,” and that “we will continue to condemn them.”
But the Whitehouse website, which has a disclaimer saying it is not a substitute for legal advice, did not provide any details about how the White house plans to respond to Trump’s comments.
In a separate tweet, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also defended the clip, saying: “My father never, ever called for violence, and I’ve never said anything about boycotting the inauguration.”
