As rioters stormed the Capitol, Trump was reportedly telling people he was glad Perdue and Loeffler lost their Georgia Senate seats, calling them not loyal enough

  • President Donald Trump spent Wednesday telling people he was happy that the Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lost their Senate races in Georgia, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reported.
  • In Georgia's Senate runoff elections held this week, Perdue lost to Jon Ossoff, while Loeffler lost to Raphael Warnock, according to Decision Desk HQ and Insider.
  • "The president was telling people today that he was happy Loeffler and Perdue lost," Haberman tweeted. "He said they didn't defend him enough."
  • A mob of Trump supporters stormed and ransacked the US Capitol building on Wednesday, and multiple reports say Trump was highly resistant to condemning them.
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Amid the carnage in the US Capitol on Wednesday, President Donald Trump was expressing his satisfaction that the Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler had lost their Senate seats, according to The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Perdue and Loeffler were beaten in Georgia's Senate runoff elections by Democratic Party candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock respectively, according to projections by Decision Desk HQ and Insider.

Trump on Wednesday tweeted that the election was "rigged," offering no evidence, and praised Perdue as "a great guy." But, in private, he was giving a different reaction, according to Haberman.

"The president was telling people today that he was happy Loeffler and Perdue lost, according to a person familiar with the conversations," she tweeted.

"He said they didn't defend him enough," she added.

Perdue had in fact defended Trump after a recording of a call — in which the president asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" around 12,000 votes so the state's election result could be overturned — was published by The Washington Post.

"I didn't hear anything in that tape that the president hasn't already said for weeks now since the November election calling for some sort of investigation, some sort of resolution to the improprieties and the irregularities that we now see happened in November here in Georgia," Perdue told Fox News at the time, referring to a baseless claim peddled by Trump and his allies about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Some lawmakers and legal experts have since called for the president to be impeached over the call. 

Meanwhile Loeffler, who branded herself as a pro-Trump candidate during her Senate campaign, had repeatedly dodged questions on whether she accepted that Trump lost the election.

On Wednesday, she told the Senate floor she was reneging on her promise to join other House Republicans in objecting to President-elect Joe Biden's victory. The outgoing senator had been at a joint session of Congress to certify Electoral College votes and confirm Biden as the next president.

"I cannot now, in good conscience, object to the certification of these electors," Loeffler said.

Despite Haberman's account of Trump's remarks, Biden said on Monday that Perdue and Loeffler had put their loyalty to the president over the American people.

"You have two senators now who think they don't work for you, they work for Trump," Biden said, according to Reuters.

"You have two senators who think their loyalty to Trump, not to Georgia. You have two senators who think they've sworn an oath to Donald Trump, not to the United States Constitution."

The mob of Trump supporters chanted "stop the steal" as they stormed the Capitol building and ransacked congressional offices on Wednesday.

The joint session of Congress was disrupted due to the attack — with lawmakers evacuated and told to wear gas masks — but went back into session around 8 p.m. ET. Lawmakers confirmed Biden's election victory around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday.

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