Tony Ornato: He doesn’t get it that the people on the monument side don't want to come in. They can see from there and don't want to come in. They can see from there and don’t have to go through mags. With 30k magged inside.
Cassidy Hutchinson: That's what was relayed several times and in different iterations
Cassidy Hutchinson: Poor max got chewed out
Cassidy Hutchinson: He also kept mentioning [an off the record trip] to Capitol before he took the stage
Tony Ornato: Bobby will tell him no. It’s not safe to do. No assets available to safely do it.[425]
And Hutchinson described what President Trump said as he prepared to take the stage:
When we were in the off-stage announce area tent behind the stage, he was very concerned about the shot. Meaning the photograph that we would get because the rally space wasn't full. One of the reasons, which I've previously stated, was because he wanted it to be full and for people to not feel excluded because they had come far to watch him at the rally. And he felt the mags were at fault for not letting everybody in, but another leading reason and likely the primary reasons is because he wanted it full and he was angry that we weren't letting people through the mags with weapons—what the Secret Service deemed as weapons, and are, are weapons. But when we were in the off-stage announce tent, I was a part of a conversation, I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the President say something to the effect of, "I don't F'ing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the F'ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the F'ing mags away."[426]
The Secret Service special agent who drove the President after his speech told the Select Committee that Trump made a similar remark in the vehicle when his demand to go to the Capitol was refused—essentially that Trump did not believe his supporters posed a security risk to him personally.[427]
Minutes after the exchange that Hutchinson described—when President Trump took the stage—he pointedly expressed his concern about the thousands of attendees who would not enter the rally area and instructed Secret Service to allow that part of the crowd to enter anyway:
