WASHINGTON – Three and a half years ago, President Donald Trump incited a violent riot at the Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory and remain in power, a special House committee concluded after a lengthy investigation.
On Thursday, Trump will make his first visit to Capitol Hill since before the Jan. 6 attack, as Republicans hail their party’s presumptive 2024 nominee as a hero.
Less than five months before his rematch with Biden, Trump is scheduled to meet behind closed doors, steps from the Capitol, with House Republicans in the morning and Republican senators in the afternoon, while the party campaign messages and her legislative strategy in 2025.
Trump and Biden are locked in a competitive race, with control of Congress up for grabs this fall, but many in the Republican Party are optimistic about winning the 2024 election and moving quickly on Trump’s agenda.
“It will be a show of unity,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a former Republican Party campaign chairman, told NBC News.
Even some critics in the party plan to attend: Sen. Sen. Bill CassidyR-La., who voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack, said he believes he will attend but is still tightening his schedule.
“The polls say he’s going to be our next president, so you have to work with him,” Cassidy said, joking that he doesn’t know what to expect. “Can you predict what Trump is going to do in the next minute? No of course not.”
It will also be the first time since the riot at the Capitol that Trump will have been in the same room with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; the two have not spoken since December 2020. At the time, McConnell called Trump “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events” of January 6. He has since endorsed Trump for president — and announced he will resign from the Senate. GOP leader after this year.
“Three years ago, right after the Capitol was attacked, I said I would support our candidate no matter who it was – including him. I said earlier this year that I support him. He has earned the nomination by voters across the country,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday, without using Trump’s name. “And of course I’ll be at the meeting tomorrow.”
Trump returns to Washington just after being convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records related to hush money payments to an adult film star and as he awaits sentencing. In between meetings with Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump will sit down with CEOs in a meeting with the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group that says it represents more than 200 major companies, as Washington and key industries prepare for the reality that Trump may become president again.
Several top candidates to become Trump’s running mate will also have a chance to get his attention on Thursday. Among them are GOP Sens. JD Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a key Trump ally who played a key role in the Republican Party’s efforts to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 victory, predicted that Trump would seek a second term win and be ‘the most consequential president of modern times’. era” as he repairs the “disaster” created by the Biden administration.
“If he comes in, we need to have a very aggressive agenda for the first 100 days; the first year will be important. I don’t think we can waste a moment because there are so many things to do,” Johnson told reporters. Wednesday. “You don’t put the cart before the horse, but you must be willing to lead.”
Other Trump critics in the party are expected to skip the Senate meeting, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah. All three voted to convict Trump after he was impeached in connection with January 6.
Romney, who is retiring from the Senate this year, said he has a flight to catch at the time of the Trump rally.
“I’m not giving him advice on what to say, and I’m sure he wouldn’t listen to my advice anyway,” Romney told reporters.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he isn’t reading much into the fact that McConnell attended the meeting with Trump.
“I don’t think it’s anything more than Mitch showing respect for our presidential candidate,” Tillis said. “And show up at the conference before the rest of us.”
It is expected that Trump will not set foot in the Capitol complex itself during his visit, which his supporters overran in 2021. He will meet with House Republicans in the morning at the Capitol Hill Club, a private Republican club just steps from the Capitol office buildings. In the afternoon, he will meet with GOP senators at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters after addressing the Business Roundtable.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., who has not endorsed Trump for president, declined to say whether he will attend.
“No questions for Trump,” Young said, adding that it is a personal rule “until I decide to stop making it a rule.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
