Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric during campaign events and interviews is inaccurate and is “undermining” American democracy, Sen. Angus King said in an interview Friday about the former president’s characterization of the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol as “love and peace.”

“I was there and I know what happened,” King, I-Maine, said in an interview with the Press Herald. “It wasn’t peaceful or loving. It was violent.”

Maine’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Susan Collins, recalled the chaotic, tumultuous scene when she was asked for her reaction to the Republican presidential candidate’s recent comments.

Senators Susan Collins and Angus King stand outside the Margaret Chase Smith Museum in Skowhegan in 2021. Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel, file 

“I will never forget hearing the chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence’ in the hallways as we carried out our constitutional duty in the Senate,” Collins said when she was asked about Trump’s comments during an interview on a different subject.

Pence, the former vice president, refused to go along with Trump’s demands that he not certify the results of the election. Congress later passed a law, the Electoral Count Act, supported by Collins and King, that clarified that the vice president’s role in presiding over the certification is ceremonial.

Trump also has said that he would pardon some of the rioters, some of whom are currently serving prison sentences.

More than 1,200 people, including more than a dozen Mainers, have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack that included breaking into the Capitol and erecting a gallows just outside the Capitol, according to the U.S Department of Justice. More than 1,000 have been found guilty, either through pleas or during a trial. And more than 120 people have been charged with using a “deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”

But Trump, in a recent interview and separately in a Univision town hall appearance, praised those who descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The primary scene in Washington was hundreds of thousands, the largest group of people I’ve ever spoken before, and I’ve spoken – and it was love and peace,” Trump said in an Oct. 15 interview with Bloomberg News.

Supporters of President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington as they try to storm the building on Jan. 6, 2021, while inside Congress prepared to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory. Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press, file

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris are vying for the presidency in the Nov. 5 election, with polls showing a tight race.

King said the intention of the mob was to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

“Their motto and their chant was ‘Stop the Steal’ not ‘Observe the Steal,’ ” King said. “To act like it was a peaceful demonstration was just not true.”

Collins was one of seven Republicans to vote to convict Trump in the former president’s second impeachment trial in February 2021. Trump was acquitted because the vote failed to reach the two-thirds threshold required to convict. King joined all Democrats and fellow independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in favor of conviction.

“It’s very clear from my vote on the second impeachment trial where I stand on Jan. 6,” Collins said.

Collins has said she is not supporting either Trump or Harris in the presidential election, and will instead write-in Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries.

Trump is facing criminal prosecution by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith on charges that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election.

King, who supports Harris’ bid for the presidency, also slammed Trump’s rhetoric of calling Democrats he doesn’t agree with, including California Rep. Adam Schiff and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the “enemy from within.” Trump has suggested using the National Guard or military on the “enemy from within” if there’s unrest on Election Day.

DANGEROUS RHETORIC

“That’s dangerous rhetoric,” King said. “We have opponents, not enemies. We may differ on our strongly held different views. But we shouldn’t call our own citizens enemies.”

King is running for reelection against Republican Demi Kouzounas and Democrat David Costello. Collins isn’t up for reelection until 2026.

King said that he’s also very concerned that if Trump were reelected he would be in charge of deciding whether to launch nuclear weapons.

“It worries me that we have a candidate who seems prone to making emotional decisions, and that the results of which would be the end of the human race,” King said.

King also praised Harris on Friday, pointing out that he knows her personally from their time serving together on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“She’s very smart, very quick, basically an impressive person,” King said. “It’s been notable to me that she has really made an effort to reach out to Republicans.”

Collins, however, was surprised to hear Harris say in a recent interview on “The View” that “not a thing comes to mind” when asked what she would have done differently than President Biden.

“I was astonished by those comments since most presidential candidates chart their own course,” Collins said.