Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, coming under fire for his speech at a pro-Trump rally last week that preceded Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, defended himself Tuesday in a lengthy statement in which he quotes Bible verses and Martin Luther King Jr., while describing himself as “a straight arrow or square.”
Brooks, a Republican from Huntsville, focused his statement on New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski of New Jersey – who co-sponsored a resolution Monday calling for Brooks to be censured by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Brooks also defended the statements he made in the speech, including “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Brooks said.
“Socialist Democrats and their Fake News Media Allies won’t get an apology from me because my remarks were not wrong,” Brooks said near the end of the 2,800-word statement. “Conversely, the Socialist Democrats and their Fake News Media Allies should be apologizing to the public for the egregiously and manipulative way they have deceived the public on this issue.
“Rest assured; I will never apologize for fighting to win our causes at the ballot box. That is the American way!”
Related: Huntsville mayor offers no support to Mo Brooks: ‘Words have meaning’
He also criticized the Trump supporters who resorted to violence in briefly taking control of the Capitol and temporarily stopping Congress as it finalized the presidential election results, saying in part, “Those who engaged in the illegal breach of the U.S. Capitol could not have done more damage if they had followed any script written by the Democrat National Committee.”
The statement is a continuation of Brooks’ stance of standing by his actions. The congressman told AL.com last week that he would “make no apology” for those comments even as he was accused of helping incite the crowd that stormed the Capitol.
“I was not encouraging anyone to engage in violence,” Brooks said in the statement. “I was encouraging people to begin a 2022 and 2024 election fight!”
Brooks described the censure resolution as being of a “reckless, defamatory, deceitful nature.”
The statement swerves from condemning the violence at the Capitol to “background” information in which Brooks said he has never smoked or used illegal drugs or gotten a speeding ticket or had an at-fault traffic accident while confessing he once deservedly got a citation when he “misjudged a traffic light” to pointing out three “flaws” in the censure resolution.
“You can imagine my dismay upon learning that Socialist Democrats, without ever even bothering to first discuss this matter with me to discern the truth, and without any substantive and connective evidence, so viciously besmirch my good name and character that took 66 years to build,” Brooks said in the statement.
Brooks said he was invited to speak the day before the rally by White House political director Brian Jack. Given the late notice, Brooks said his speech was taken in part “from my often-used “America is Great” political speeches that I have given dozens of times, perhaps hundreds of times” throughout his 34-year political career.
The fact that Brooks was the first speaker at the rally – about two hours before Trump addressed the audience from the same stage – distances the congressman and his speech from the violence, he said.
“There was music, there was my speech, there was more music, then there was some number of speakers, then a couple hours or so later, President Trump began speaking,” Brooks said in the statement. “I ask this question: If my remarks were as inspirational as the Socialist Democrats and their Fake News Media allies want the public to believe, why didn’t the Trump rally participants, after my remarks, immediately get up and storm the Capitol?
“Why not indeed! The answer is simple. No one at the rally interpreted my remarks to be anything other than what they were: A pep talk after the derriere kicking conservatives suffered in the dismal 2020 elections.”
And finding more success at the polls in 2022 and 2024 is what Brooks said he was referring while invoking the “kicking ass” phrase that has come to identify the speech.
“While I did utter those words, what is deceitfully omitted is the immediately preceding sentence, that begins with, ‘But let’s be clear, regardless of today’s outcome, the 2022 and the 2024 elections are right around the corner,’” Brooks said in the statement.
“This preceding sentence, clearly and unambiguously confirms that my ‘take names and kicking derrieres’ remarks refers to fighting to win elections in 2022 and 2024 and had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal breach of the Capitol that occurred later in the day.”
Brooks objected to the censure resolution because it “deceitfully attributes to me things that are absolutely false. It asserts, with no credible evidence, a linkage between my words and the illegal breach of the Capitol.”
Updated today, Jan. 12, 2021, at 3:06 p.m. with more information on Brooks’ statement.