In private texts after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Brad Parscale — a man central to Donald Trump’s rise — expressed remorse for his role in ever getting Trump elected.
“A sitting president asking for civil war,” Parscale texted Katrina Pierson, a former Trump spokesperson. “This week I feel guilty for helping him win.”
The texts were revealed in a hearing Tuesday held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and provided a rare, unfiltered insight into two of the Trump world’s more notable personalities. Parscale was Trump’s campaign manager from February 2018 to July 2020 and the social media adviser who helped hone the former president’s internet image.
Texting each other early in the evening of Jan. 6, after the attackers had left the Capitol, Parscale sounded regretful while Pierson appeared ummoved.
Pierson appeared to try to console Parscale, texting back, “You did what you felt was right at the time and therefore it was right.”
“Yeah. But a woman is dead,” Parscale answered, an apparent reference to Ashli Babbitt, the attacker who was fatally shot while trying to enter the Speaker’s Lobby adjacent to the House floor through a broken window.
“Yeah. But a woman is dead”
- text message from Brad Parscale, former Trump campaign manager
“You do realize this was going to happen,” Pierson replied.
Parscale then imagined how Trump felt if he knew his “rhetoric killed someone.”
“It wasn’t the rhetoric,” Pierson texted.
“Katrina.” Parscale replied within the same minute, according to time stamps in the committee’s presentation.
“Yes it was,” he continued.
Thirty-five-year-old Babbitt’s death has become something of a cause célèbre in some right-wing circles, even as the officer who shot her was cleared of any wrongdoing after an investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
“Specifically, the investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber,” the office said in April 2021.