WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump persisted in saying during the presidential debate that he won the 2020 election and took no responsibility for any of the mayhem that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the building to block the peaceful transfer of power.
The comments Tuesday night underscored the Republican's refusal, even four years later, to accept the reality of his defeat and his unwillingness to admit the extent to which his falsehoods about his election loss emboldened the mob that rushed the Capitol, resulting in violent clashes with law enforcement. Trump's grievances about that election are central to his 2024 campaign against Democrat Kamala Harris, as he professes allegiance to the rioters.
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232, and there was no widespread fraud, as election officials across the country, including Trump’s then-attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, crucial to Biden’s victory, vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices.
An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found fewer than 475. Biden took Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 electoral votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.
In the ABC debate, Trump was asked twice if he regretted anything he did on Jan. 6, when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and exhorted them to “fight like hell.” On the Philadelphia stage, Trump first responded by complaining that the questioner had failed to note that he had encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully and patriotically.” Trump also noted that one of his backers, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot inside the building by a Capitol Police officer.
Trump suggested that protesters who committed crimes during the 2020 racial injustice protests were not prosecuted. But an AP review in 2021 of documents in more than 300 federal cases stemming from the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death found that more than 120 defendants across U.S. pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial of federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy.
When the question about his actions on Jan. 6 arose again, Trump replied: “I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech. I showed up for a speech.”
But he ignored other incendiary language he used throughout the speech, during which he urged the crowd to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s victory. Trump told the crowd: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” That’s after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, declared: “Let’s have trial by combat.”
Trump didn’t appeal for the rioters to leave the Capitol until more than three hours after the assault began. He then released a video telling the rioters it was time to “go home,” but added: “We love you. You’re very special people.”
He also repeated an oft-stated false claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “rejected” his offer to send “10,000 National Guard or soldiers” to the Capitol. Pelosi does not direct the National Guard. As the Capitol came under attack, she and then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. called for military assistance, including from the National Guard.
Harris pledged to “turn the page” from Jan. 6, when she was in the Capitol as democracy came under attack.
“So for everyone watching, who remembers what January 6th was, I say, 'We don’t have to go back. Let’s not go back. We’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page.”
Though Trump had seemed to acknowledge in a recent podcast interview that he had indeed “lost by a whisker," he insisted Tuesday night that that was a sarcastic remark and resumed his boasts about the election.
“I’ll show you Georgia, and I’ll show you Wisconsin, and I’ll show you Pennsylvania,” he said in rattling off states where he claimed, falsely, that he had won. “We have so many facts and statistics.”
Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Melissa Goldin contributed to this report.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waits at the podium during a break in the presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at the National Constitution Center, Tuesday, Sept.10, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at the National Constitution Center, Tuesday, Sept.10, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
ROME (AP) — The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem.
“We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin's school of English, told The Associated Press.
What's more, she said, the poem was within the main body of Latin text: "It was extraordinary.”
Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, "Caedmon’s Hymn" appears within some copies of the “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” written in Latin by a monk and saint known as the Venerable Bede. His history is one of the most widely reproduced texts from the Middle Ages, with almost 200 manuscripts, according to Magnanti's colleague Mark Faulkner, an associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity.
He considers Caedmon’s poem to be the start of English literature.
The manuscript he and Magnanti found is one of the oldest, dating from the 9th century. Two earlier copies contain the poem in Old English, but as afterthoughts — translated from Latin and scrawled into the margin by later scribes or appended but not within the text's main body, according to the researchers.
The discovery sheds light on the English language's wide diffusion, long before what was previously understood, Faulkner said in Rome, where the duo had traveled to view the text in person for the first time.
“Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript, the earliest one was from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries earlier than that. And so it attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early 9th century,” Faulkner said.
And it's something of a miracle they uncovered it at all.
Caedmon is said to have composed the poem while working at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, after guests at a feast began reciting poems, Faulkner said.
“Embarrassed that he didn’t know anything suitable, Caedmon left the feast and went to bed," he said. "A figure then appeared to him in his dreams telling him to sing about creation, which Caedmon miraculously did, producing the nine-line hymn."
Some 1,400 years later, this copy of his poem resurfaced in Rome’s main public library — but not before crossing the Atlantic Ocean at least twice and changing hands even more times.
Monks transcribed this copy of Bede's history in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola, one of the most important transcription centers during the Middle Ages, located near modern-day Modena in northern Italy, according to Valentina Longo, curator of medieval and modern manuscripts at Rome's National Central Library.
In the 17th century, as the abbey's importance declined, its vast collection of manuscripts was shifted to another abbey in Rome, then moved to the Vatican and finally on to a small church.
Along the way, some of the texts went missing, only to emerge in the early 19th century in the possession of famous international collectors, Longo said.
This copy of Bede's history went to renowned English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps. He fell on hard times, selling off bits and pieces of his collection, and Swiss bibliophile Martin Bodmer secured the book. From there, somehow, it arrived in New York City, in the trove of Austrian-born rare bookseller H.P. Kraus during the 20th century.
Italy's culture ministry was scouring the world for the Nonantola abbey's missing manuscripts, snapping them up in auctions and from collectors around the world. It bought the copy of Bede's history from Kraus in 1972, Longo said, and since then the illustrious text has remained in Rome's library — but received scant notice.
Enter Magnanti, who had spent over four years studying Bede’s history and was compiling a catalog of extant copies.
“I knew that the book was listed in the library’s catalog, so I was almost certain that the book was, in fact, still here," she said. “I realized that, because of the very complex history of this book, no big scholar had really looked at it. So it had been virtually unstudied."
She emailed the library, which confirmed the book was in its stacks. Three months later, she received digital images of the entire manuscript.
Now we must praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom,
the might of the creator and his intention,
the work of the father of glory, in that he of each wonder,
eternal lord, established the beginning.
He first created the earth for men,
heaven as a roof, the holy creator,
then the middle earth, the guardian of mankind,
the eternal lord, afterwards created
for men on earth, the almighty lord.
The library has digitized the entire Nonantolan collection and it is freely accessible through the website, Longo said.
It's part of a massive project by the library to make thousands of rare books and manuscripts available to researchers around the world, according to Andrea Cappa, the library's head of manuscripts and the rare books reading room.
“The discovery made by the experts of Trinity College is just one starting point, a single manuscript that might pave the way for countless other discoveries, in countless other fields, through international cooperation like this,” Cappa said.
The 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is seen at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)
A rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is visible in the five lines above the final line of a page from an 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)
From left, Elisabetta Magnanti, Mark Faulkner of Dublin's Trinity College, Andrea Cappa and Valentina Longo of Rome's National Central Library examine a manuscript containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)
From left, Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner from Dublin's Trinity College and Valentina Longo of Rome's National Central Library look at a manuscript containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn, the first poem ever to be written down in Old English, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)
A rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is visible in the five lines above the final line of the left page from an 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)null
