Trump plans to speak at a “Save America” rally Wednesday at Ellipse.
While a joint session of Congress meets on Wednesday to formally certify the votes of the Electoral College, President Donald Trump plans to speak at a “Save America” rally near the White House, according to sources familiar with his plans .
Thousands are expected to attend the rally at Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House, as pro-Trump supporters arrive in the nation’s capital for a series of marches in protest against the results of the 2020 election.
The meeting will mark the first rally-style event that Trump will attend in Washington since he was defeated by President-elect Joe Biden in November. Trump had already driven his entourage and flew aboard the Marine One to support those who gathered to protest in Washington, DC
Over the weekend, the president tweeted, “I’ll be there. Historic day!” responding to a tweet from one of the organizers of the rally.
Trump’s plan to attend Wednesday’s rally comes in the wake of the audio of a phone call on Saturday that he had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president demanded that Raffensperger “find” the exact number of votes he would need to be declared the winner in Georgia, despite three separate counts confirmed that he lost.
“The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry, and there is nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you recalculated,” Trump told Raffensperger on the call. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than us.”
President-elect Joe Biden won the state by 11,779 votes.
Many advisers close to the president were “beside themselves” and unaware of the existence of the connection until the story was first published by the Washington Post on Sunday night, sources told ABC News.
The sources say Trump is increasingly isolated, describing a man who is only interested in the certification process of the Electoral College in Congress on January 6.
Even legalists who have so far publicly supported the president’s false claims that the election was stolen from him have started to think about job opportunities in a post-Trump world – but have not been able to discuss with Trump whether they will still work for him outside the White House, say the sources.
“We are still in the denial phase,” said a Trump ally, who described Trump’s plans between January 6 and Biden’s inauguration on January 20 as “unknown.”
However, one of the few offices with full staff remaining in the White House is the White House Council Office, which continues to examine the growing list of potential pardons for the president to grant in his final days in office. The final rounds of pardons are expected to come in waves during Trump’s final weeks, with some coming as early as this week, the sources said.
And while Trump may not be discussing this publicly, the president still plans to spend his post-presidential life in Florida.
While he spent the Christmas holiday at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Trump smoked about the renovations in his rooms, according to sources familiar with his mood.
Trump, along with First Lady Melania Trump and her son Barron, planned to make the club their full-time home, but due to space problems and threats from local officials, claiming that the club cannot be used as a full-time residence , plans may change.
Sources say the Trumps have started considering buying a home in the Palm Beach area that would not be on the Mar-a-Lago site.