After the riot at Capitol Hill on January 6th, 2021, many Americans believe that former President Donald Trump should be impeached for inciting the attack on the nation’s capital. While the president did not directly tell his supporters to start a riot he did make some preliminary remarks before the election results and multiple claims in his speech that could have sparked vicious behavior from his supporters.

Before the election results were even called, President Trump had told his supporters that the only way he could lose the election would be if the democrats cheated. President Trump made many claims that the democrats were throwing away ballots from republicans and making fake ballots for Joe Biden. The President even started a slogan called, ‘Stop the Steal’ to promote the idea that the Democrats were going to cheat him out of an election win. While this information may not directly relate to the riot, the remarks made by President Trump made his supporters think that the only way he could lose the election would be if the Democrats cheated. So obviously, when Joe Biden won the election, Trump supporters thought the Democrats had cheated, and Trump even filed lawsuits in many states claiming that there was voter fraud with very little evidence. The belief that the democrats stole the election angered many republicans, and by the time Donald Trump made his speech on Capital Hill on January 6th, many of them were angry and believed the Democrats robbed the American people of a ‘fair election.’ Trump’s claims prior to the election set the stage for something big to happen and when no evidence of voter fraud was found, many Trump supporters refused to believe Joe Biden was the winner of the 2020 election.

During the day of the incident, Trump had made some suggestive remarks and even seemed to feed off the negative energy of the crowd. “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all you people really came up with: “We will stop the steal” Transcript of Trump’s Speech at Rally Before US Capitol Riot. While Trump does not directly tell his supporters to go and riot and ransack the Capitol Hill building, he does send some subliminal messages. The words, ‘Our country has had enough’ could lead to aggressive behavior considering Trump’s supporters had believed the election would be fraudulent months before the results were even in, and that their voices were not being heard. Trump sprinkles subliminal messages throughout the entire speech, the remarks made are open ended and allow the audience to make their own assumptions on how they should handle the situation. These remarks mixed with the current negativity of the situation led the crowd at the rally to make an attack on the nation’s capital. Another interesting part of this claim is how Trump once again mentions the slogan, ‘Stop the steal.’ Mentioning this phrase brought his claims prior to the election into his current argument and made it seem as if he had been right about the election being fraudulent all along. The anger felt previously by his supporters came full circle, and made them feel as if their concerns were completely ignored by the government for to long,

Another claim President Trump made in his speech was, “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”  Trump is ‘personally responsible’ for inciting deadly Capitol riot, House impeachment managers argue.This remark led the audience to believe that if they did not fight for their country it would no longer exist, this may have frightened his audience and even angered them. The phrase ‘fight like hell’ also potentially caused aggressive behavior, and led the audience to believe that they literally had to fight in order to preserve the country. 

There are many other remarks and phrases made in Trump’s speech that could have possibly incited the violence on Capitol Hill. Phrases like ‘We will never concede’ and ‘Patriotically make your voices heard’, are very open ended and do not directly tell the audience to riot, however, they are very suggestive and aggressive words like concede and patriotically give the speech a pugnacious tone that subliminally incites the crowd to take action and attack the capital.