January 6: The Wanna-Be King's Speech

Read It, Knowing What We Know Now

Today is the final January 6 we will have before Trump’s return to the White House, where he will use presidential power to erase his and others’ crimes against America from our collective memory and history books.

Of course, they’ve been trying to whitewash it all ever since. And it’s worked to some degree.

But once Trump re-assumes the Presidency, he and his minions will use their official powers and legal processes to go much further. This will include minimizing their own actions and complicity, pardoning those who attacked the Capitol and committed violence, and attempting to punish those who worked to expose the truth to the nation and bring accountability. The entire right-wing universe and political world will be part of this whitewashing and gaslighting project.

Knowing that this is coming, I’m presenting below the heart of Trump’s infamous January 6 speech. (Some will remember that I did this a year ago). You’ll see why when you read it why it’s so important that every American takes the time to review the words involved in one of the lowest moments in our nation’s history. (Before my post last year, I had never read them that closely—my guess is most Americans haven’t either).

Why?

Because amid all the coming efforts to erase history, the words of the speech itself can not be erased. A foundational artifact that can’t be buried.

And equally importantly, versus what we knew (and didn’t know) when we saw him giving the speech live, the words are far more damning now—in the light of all we’ve learned since the infamous day, including:

• that he was told by much of his staff and lawyers, as well as officials in states, that he had lost the election;

• that despite that, he had engaged in a weeks-long campaign to undermine confidence in the outcome in certain states, and was pursuing a variety strategies to overturn those outcomes based on the doubt he’d sowed;

• that with those conspiracy theories as a backdrop, he and his legal goon squad had concocted a rogue legal theory and phony fake elector scam to take place before and during the House vote on January 6;

• that with the help of lawyers, he had been bullying Vice President Pence to swing the outcome on January 6;

• that he had schemed with a number of House members and Senators to delay the January 6 vote, giving them all time to create even more chaos, sow even more doubt, and ultimately overturn the election.

Now that we know about all those background actions and plans, the tone, tactics and strategy of his January 6 speech—which we at first might've dismissed (or not even paid attention to) as a typical Trump rant—carry a far different meaning.

This was no protest. Or even riot. This was a deliberate and planned action to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and both in this speech and on Twitter, Trump was the ringleader and executor of the central act.

Here are the essential excerpts of the speech, along with some additional context. Read the words closely:

January 6, 1:00 a.m.: Trump tweets:

8:17 a.m: Trump again tweets about Pence:

Several more tweets follow over the course of the morning:

NOON: After a number of warm-up acts (including Rudy Giuliani calling for ”Trial by combat,”) Trump begins his speech:

Well, thank you very much. This is incredible….

It's just a great honor to have this kind of crowd and to be before you and hundreds of thousands of American patriots who are committed to the honesty of our elections and the integrity of our glorious republic.

All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved.

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.

You know, I say, sometimes jokingly, but there's no joke about it: I've been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. OK. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country, 12 million more people than four years ago….

We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen, I'm not going to let it happen.

(Audience chants: "Fight for Trump.")

…

Thank you very much, John [Eastman]. Fantastic job. I watched. That's a tough act to follow, those two. John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and he said, "What an absolute disgrace that this can be happening to our Constitution."

And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so.

Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.

States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.

And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen….

For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that's what they are. There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it's, it's incredible.

Many of the Republicans, I helped them get in, I helped them get elected. I helped Mitch get elected. I helped. I could name 24 of them, let's say, I won't bore you with it. And then all of a sudden you have something like this. It's like, "Oh gee, maybe I'll talk to the president sometime later." No, it's amazing.

They're weak Republicans, they're pathetic Republicans and that's what happens….

The weak Republicans, and that's it. I really believe it. I think I'm going to use the term, the weak Republicans. You've got a lot of them. And you got a lot of great ones. But you got a lot of weak ones. They've turned a blind eye, even as Democrats enacted policies that chipped away our jobs, weakened our military, threw open our borders and put America last.

And you have to get your people to fight. And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight. You primary them. We're going to. We're going to let you know who they are. I can already tell you, frankly.

But this year, using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft and there's never been anything like this. So pure theft in American history. Everybody knows it.

That election, our election was over at 10 o'clock in the evening. We're leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, by hundreds of thousands of votes.

And then late in the evening, or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of bull****.

And all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen…

Republicans are, Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It's like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we're going to have to fight much harder.

And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.

Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections….

Today we see a very important event though. Because right over there, right there, we see the event going to take place. And I'm going to be watching. Because history is going to be made. We're going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders, or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity they'll be ashamed.

And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never, ever forget that they did. Never forget. We should never ever forget.

With only three of the seven states in question, we win the presidency of the United States…

I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. They're over there working like you've never seen before. Studying, talking, actually going all the way back, studying the roots of the Constitution, because they know we have the right to send a bad vote that was illegally gotten….

But I want to thank all of those congressmen and women. I also want to thank our 13, most courageous members of the U.S. Senate. Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Josh Hawley, Kelly Loeffler….

Today, for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our Constitution, and for the sake of our children, we lay out the case for the entire world to hear. You want to hear it?

In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats, made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures.

That these changes paved a way for fraud on a scale never seen before. I think we go a long way outside of our country when I say that.

[Trump details his conspiracy theories about Pennysylvania]

Pennsylvania has now seen all of this. They didn't know because it was so quick. They had a vote. They voted. But now they see all this stuff, it's all come to light. Doesn't happen that fast. And they want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.

(Audience chants: "Send it back.")

And many people in Congress want it sent back.

And think of what you're doing. Let's say you don't do it. Somebody says, "Well, we have to obey the Constitution." And you are, because you're protecting our country and you're protecting the Constitution. So you are….

And we got to remember, in a year from now, you're going to start working on Congress and we got to get rid of the weak Congress, people, the ones that aren't any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. We got to get rid of them. We got to get rid…

The radical left knows exactly what they're doing. They're ruthless and it's time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories….

So, I mean, I could go on and on about this fraud that took place in every state, and all of these legislatures want this back. I don't want to do it to you because I love you and it's freezing out here. But I could just go on forever. I can tell you this….

The Republicans have to get tougher. You're not going to have a Republican Party if you don't get tougher. They want to play so straight. They want to play so, sir, yes, the United States. The Constitution doesn't allow me to send them back to the States. Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can't vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules.

So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he's listening to….

We won in a landslide. This was a landslide. They said it's not American to challenge the election. This the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world….

This is not just a matter of domestic politics — this is a matter of national security.

So today, in addition to challenging the certification of the election, I'm calling on Congress and the state legislatures to quickly pass sweeping election reforms, and you better do it before we have no country left.

Today is not the end, it's just the beginning….[O]ur fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There's never been a movement like that…

We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen again…

If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information…But now, the caravans, I think Biden's getting in, the caravans are forming again. They want to come in again and rip off our country. Can't let it happen….

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore….

And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.

So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I want to thank you all. God bless you and God Bless America.

Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The speech ends at 1:10 p.m.

With Pence inside, the Capitol grounds had already been breached for 20 minutes by then (about 30 minutes after Trump had first told the crowd that they would be marching to the Capitol).

1:02 p.m.: Pence refuses to accede to Trump’s demands.

2:12 p.m.: the first rioter enters the Capitol building itself; Vice President Pence is evacuated, escaping only 40 feet from rioters who have breached the building.

2:24 p.m.: Trump, knowing about the breach and that Pence is sheltering to stay safe, tweets again:

Immediately following this tweet, according to the House Jan. 6 committee, “the crowds both inside and outside of the Capitol building violently surged forward,” overrunning police lines that had previously held stable.

You know the rest.

Bottom line: as we watch Trump try to erase his actions on January 6—and punish those who uncovered all this evidence—NEVER FORGET this speech. Or the context in which it was given.

It’s clear: He knew exactly what he was doing. It was a plan. He fired the starter’s pistol to launch it. He came damn close to succeeding.

It is one of the great failures in American history that he was not held accountable for it. But that failure will only be made worse if we allow that history be erased.

Day 36 — January 5, 2025

Through posts and interviews, Trump and his political allies make clear that their plan on assuming office is “shock and awe”—rushing forward their plans into an immediate flurry of executive orders, followed by, as Trump put it, “one powerful Bill” combining all of his major policy proposals at once.

As always, he promises to pay for the added costs with tariffs.