At the Ellipse rally Trump told the crowd to walk to the Capitol, said “we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and also said marchers should make their voices heard “peacefully and patriotically.” Both lines are in the speech. Quoting only one of them misleads. [1][2]
At 2:24 p.m., after rioters were inside, he tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” The House committee’s account, built largely from Republican witnesses inside the White House, describes aides and family urging him for hours to call the crowd off. His video telling people to go home came at 4:17 p.m. [1]
Trump says he did nothing wrong and called the day a protest that a few people took too far. The Senate did not convict him: 57 senators, including seven Republicans, voted guilty, short of the 67 needed. Several who voted to acquit, including Mitch McConnell, said they did so because he had already left office, not because he was blameless. [3]
Colorado’s Supreme Court later ruled that his role made him ineligible for the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed in March 2024, holding that states cannot enforce that clause against presidential candidates without action by Congress. It did not decide whether he engaged in insurrection. [4]
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