- President
Donald Trump urged his supporters to flock to Washington, DC, on January 6, promising them a "wild" rally. - January 6 is the day when Congress is scheduled to meet to formally finalize the presidential election results.
- Though not much can legally be done on the date, many pro-Trump Republicans have said they will try to disrupt the process.
President Donald Trump promised his supporters there would be a "wild" rally in Washington, DC, on January 6, the day when Congress is scheduled to meet to formally finalize the presidential election results.
"Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," Trump tweeted on Saturday. "Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
Trump's tweet - which included an outright false claim in challenging the possibility of his losing - came in response to a 36-page report published by the White House economic advisor Peter Navarro that included widely debunked claims of election fraud.
His tweet has since been flagged by Twitter as "disputed."
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020
The January 6 gathering of House and Senate lawmakers is considered a formality in which they simply approve the long-decided count of electoral votes.
Trump lost to Joe Biden by 306 electoral votes to 232, a result confirmed by the Electoral College on December 14.
Several pro-Trump Republicans, however, have said they plan to disrupt the formal process, with Representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeting on Saturday: "On January 6th...I will OBJECT and REJECT the fraudulent electoral votes from several states across the country."
—Marjorie Taylor Greene (@mtgreenee) December 19, 2020
Trump has refused to concede to Biden, repeatedly pushing baseless claims challenging the integrity of the result.
Two weeks later, on January 20, Biden is set to be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, in what his team called a "more imaginative" virtual event.
Trump told aides last week that he might refuse to leave the White House that day, according to CNN, which added that few of them believed he would follow through on the threat.
Biden told Stephen Colbert in an interview on Thursday that it didn't bother him "personally" that Trump might not attend his inauguration but that he was concerned how Trump's absence would look "to the rest of the world."
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