What specific words did Donald Trump use in his January 6 2021 speech to rally supporters?
Executive summary
President Donald Trump, in his January 6, 2021, Ellipse speech, combined repeated assertions that the 2020 election was "stolen" with explicit language urging supporters to move toward the Capitol — telling the crowd they would be "marching to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard" and later, "So we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue ... and we are going to the Capitol," adding "I’ll be with you" and urging the crowd to give "weak" Republicans "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country" [1] [2] [3].
1. The core public lines: "peacefully and patriotically" and "we are going to walk down"
In the speech’s most oft-cited lines, Trump told the assembled crowd, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard," a formulation he and allies later used to defend his responsibility for events that followed [2] [3]. He closed by saying, "So we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue — I love Pennsylvania Avenue — and we are going to the Capitol," language that the National Security Archive and contemporaneous transcripts record as a directional call to move toward the site of the congressional certification [2] [1].
2. The personal accompaniment: "I'll be with you" and implied presence
Trump added a personal reassurance that he would accompany the marchers, saying "I’ll be with you" as he encouraged them to head to the Capitol, words that have been highlighted repeatedly in reporting and legal analyses as expressing intent to join or at least accompany the crowd’s movement [2] [1]. Commentators and legal analysts later contrasted that phrasing with other moments in the speech where he used "peacefully and patriotically" to argue he counseled nonviolence, noting the tension between the two statements as central to debates over culpability [3].
3. Thanksgiving of grievance: repeating "stolen" and the media complaint
Across the hour-long address Trump repeatedly characterized the election as "stolen" and framed his remarks as correcting what he described as media and institutional deception, even telling the crowd that the press "will not show the magnitude of this crowd," a rhetorical move that reinforced grievance and urgency in the lead-up to the directional instructions [1] [4]. The Atlantic and other outlets summarized the speech as a sustained repetition of spurious fraud claims that prefaced the call to move on the Capitol [5].
4. Provocation of fellow Republicans: "give weak Republicans ... pride and boldness"
Beyond marching language, Trump explicitly shamed and pressured elected Republicans in the crowd’s hearing, saying the demonstrators should give "weak" Republicans "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country," a passage cited by contemporaneous transcripts and subsequent analyses as an attempt to coerce legislative allies through public pressure [2] [1]. That phrasing is often cited in legal and political accounts as part of the speech’s strategy to intervene in the certification process [3].
5. How reporters and investigators recorded these words
Multiple official transcripts and journalistic transcriptions — including the National Security Archive, NPR’s published transcript, and reporting compiled by news outlets and investigators — document the precise quoted phrases above and note their sequencing: repeated election-fraud claims, the "peacefully and patriotically" line, the march-to-the-Capitol directive, the "I’ll be with you" accompaniment, and the admonition to pressure "weak" Republicans [2] [1] [4]. Analysts have used those contiguous quoted lines to argue about intent and causation, while Trump and some defenders have emphasized the "peacefully and patriotically" clause in legal and public defenses [3].
6. Limits of the provided record and competing narratives
The available sources firmly record what Trump said on the Ellipse and how he framed his appeals, but they also show competing narratives: Trump and his allies repeatedly point to the "peacefully and patriotically" language to deny culpability, while prosecutors, reporters and scholars emphasize the subsequent directional and coercive lines as central to the chain of events that culminated at the Capitol [3] [5]. The public transcripts and investigative summaries cited here document the exact phrases quoted above, but determinations about legal intent and responsibility rest on broader evidentiary questions beyond the words alone [1] [3].