Which speakers addressed the Ellipse rally before Donald Trump on January 6, 2021?
Executive summary
The Ellipse “Save America” rally on January 6, 2021, was a Women for America First–permitted event that featured a series of pro-Trump speakers before former President Donald Trump’s appearance; contemporary local reporting and later investigations identify Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Julio Gonzalez and the duo “Diamond and Silk” among those who spoke prior to Trump [1] [2]. Official timelines and the House Select Committee record the event as scheduled with speakers beginning in the morning and Trump slated to speak around midday, but publicly available lists of every person who took the stage that morning vary across sources and definitive, complete rosters are not supplied in the reporting provided here [2] [3].
1. The permit, the organizer and the planned program
The rally was held on the Ellipse under a First Amendment permit granted to Women for America First and promoted as the “March for Trump” or “Save America” rally with speeches scheduled to run from roughly 9:00 a.m., per contemporaneous reporting and later timelines compiled about the January 6 events [2] [4]. The House Select Committee’s final report documents that the Ellipse rally was the permitted centerpiece of the day and that organizers coordinated a line-up of speakers intended to precede the president’s remarks, and Secret Service and other officials were aware of the scheduled program in advance [3].
2. Who is identified in reporting as speaking before Trump
Multiple contemporaneous news accounts list several high-profile pro‑Trump figures who addressed the Ellipse crowd before Trump spoke: Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Julio Gonzalez, and the conservative commentators Diamond and Silk are named in local coverage as part of the Women for America First speaker slate [1]. Those names are corroborated by timeline summaries of the event that document a string of surrogates and allies who addressed the crowd at the Ellipse prior to President Trump’s roughly noon speech [2] [4].
3. Timing and sequence: how “before Trump” is defined
The event’s published schedule and multiple reconstructions show speakers beginning in the morning with Trump’s address set for around midday, meaning any individual who spoke earlier in the program is properly described as having addressed the crowd “before Trump” [2] [1]. C-SPAN’s recording and posting of Trump’s own January 6 speech confirms his central, later slot in the Ellipse program that day, while news organizations and the Select Committee note that the Ellipse activities were intended to march toward the Capitol after the speeches [5] [3].
4. Discrepancies, omissions and limits in the public record
Public lists of speakers vary: contemporary media highlighted certain marquee names, and later investigatory documents focus more on organizers, timelines and accountability than on producing a single definitive roster of every speaker who took a microphone that morning; the reporting consulted names some speakers repeatedly but does not deliver a comprehensive, minute‑by‑minute speaker log available in these sources [1] [3]. The Wikipedia timelines and investigative summaries add context about planning and movement between events but, as publicly posted here, do not fully enumerate every person who spoke at the Ellipse or specify exact speaking order beyond the leading figures [4] [2].
5. What this roster tells the historical record
Taken together, contemporaneous local reporting and later governmental review establish that the Ellipse program included high-profile right‑wing surrogates—most prominently Giuliani, Stone, Julio Gonzalez and Diamond and Silk—who spoke before Trump’s address and helped set the tone for the crowd’s subsequent movements toward the Capitol [1] [2] [5]. The Select Committee and other investigative accounts emphasize that the content and scheduling of the Ellipse speeches were relevant to understanding how the crowd assembled and then mobilized, even as gaps remain in a single, fully authenticated list of every speaker in the public reporting assembled here [3] [4].