NBC News
Quote:
Former President Donald Trump embraced a Jan. 6 defendant at a diner during a campaign stop Thursday night, calling the woman, who served prison time for her actions during the Capitol attack and wants former Vice President Mike Pence executed for treason, "terrific."
Micki Larson-Olson, a QAnon supporter who said she considers Trump the "real president," was convicted last year of unlawful entry on Capitol grounds. On Thursday night, she met Trump for the first time at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester.
On Jan. 6, Larson-Olson climbed the scaffolding set up for Joe Biden's inauguration and held on when police tried to remove her; she later bragged on social media and in an interview that it took six officers to remove her. Larson-Olson told NBC News that she "refused" to leave the platform and has "absolutely no regrets" about her actions that day.
“My only regret is that I wasn’t stronger, that I couldn’t hold on longer,” Larson-Olson told NBC News in an hourlong interview Friday. She said she told officers they were going to have to shoot her to get her off the platform. “You can shoot me dead, for all I care, I’m not walking down these damn stairs," Larson-Olson said she told officers.
Larson-Olson said she believes that the members of Congress who voted to certify Biden's presidential election should be executed.
The meeting comes as Trump has said he may pardon those charged in the Capitol attack and just a month after he opened a campaign rally with a song performed by the "J6 choir" made up of Jan. 6 defendants who are incarcerated awaiting trial.
Larson-Olson said she drove nearly 2,000 miles from Abilene, Texas, to see Trump in New Hampshire on Thursday night.
Larson-Olson was introduced to Trump as a "Jan. 6er," and he signed the backpack that she said she was carrying with her that day and waived her past security so he could embrace her. “Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump said, calling her a “terrific woman" and kissing her on the cheek. Trump said it was “so bad” what has been done to Jan. 6 “patriots.”
"If I were to imagine what it would be like to hug Jesus Christ — not that I'm saying President Trump is Jesus Christ — but, just, you know, if I was to imagine what it would be like to hug Jesus Christ, that's what it felt like for me," Larson-Olson said. "It was so personal and intimate."
Larson-Olson said that she got out of prison last month after serving more than 160 days and that she was often placed in more restrictive confinement because of her refusal to comply with Covid protocols. She said she'd do it all over again because she believes that Trump is the true president.
"They could've shoved me in there for the rest of my life," Larson-Olson said. She said the judge sentenced her because she had no regrets for what happened on Jan. 6.
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