“It’s going to be a pep rally,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), a Trump loyalist, predicted.
Trump is expected to capitalize on the conservative enthusiasm for him on Capitol Hill by stressing that the ideologically splintered House and Senate GOP conference should remember what policy issues they can agree on to firmly unite ahead of the 2024 general election, according to a Trump campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the private meetings.
Trump’s first visit to Capitol Hill since leaving the White House comes two weeks after he became the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime after a jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money case.
It will also be his first visit to Capitol Hill since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in which a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol complex to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Though Trump was not at the Capitol that day — and weeks later skipped Biden’s inauguration — his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are at the heart of some of the federal charges against him.
The Biden campaign has latched onto Trump’s first return to the Capitol since the insurrection, releasing a campaign ad running Thursday across battleground states reminding voters of the violence that day.
“Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime. January 6th was a crime against the Capitol,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former House speaker, said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign. “With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy.”
Congressional Republicans’ expected warm reception of the former president is the latest example of them tying their fate to Trump once again, even though some lawmakers are privately unenthusiastic about the prospect of Trump’s return to Washington.
House Republicans in particular have vehemently come to Trump’s defense, lining up behind him while he was in court last month and pledging to use their majority to aggressively target the alleged “weaponization” of government against him by the Biden administration.
But it remains unclear whether moderate Republicans, some of whom voted to impeach Trump in 2021 following the Jan. 6 insurrection, will protest by skipping the meetings on Thursday.
Reps. David G. Valadao (Calif.) and Dan Newhouse (Wash.) are the only two House Republicans still in office out of 10 who voted to impeach Trump the second time. Only Newhouse said he would attend Thursday’s meeting, but he declined to say whether he would vote for Trump in November.
Of the 16 House Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020, five — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Young Kim (Calif.), David Schweikert (Ariz.), Michelle Steel (Calif.) and Valadao — do not appear to have publicly endorsed Trump. Only Schweikert has publicly said he would attend Thursday’s gathering, but that doesn’t mean the others won’t show up.
Eleven of the House Republicans in seats won by Biden in 2020 have endorsed Trump. They plan to attend the meeting Thursday and explained their support by pointing out that voters have elected him as the presumptive Republican nominee or touted his administration’s economic and crime record.
“I know he’s working hard despite the legal challenges that they’ve been throwing at him,” said Rep. Mike Garcia, a Republican who represents a swing district Biden won in California. “What I want to hear is, how are we going to unscrew this Biden administration after we win?”
Many House Republicans across the ideological spectrum said Wednesday that they were “excited” to welcome Trump back and hear from him. They acknowledged that he may have some work to do to unite the fractious conference that has been repeatedly unable to agree in divided government.
“I think what we’ve seen over the last year, starting with the ousting of [former House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy, it showed that there were fractures in our conference,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.), another vulnerable incumbent. “I think tomorrow the president has an opportunity to reaffirm to the members of our conference how important it is to stick together.”
After rallying House Republicans, Trump will meet Senate Republicans on their turf shortly after noon Thursday. In a meeting invitation obtained by The Washington Post, Senate Republicans were told to expect “to hear directly from President Trump about his plans for the summer and to also share our ideas for a strategic governing agenda for 2025.”
A majority of Senate Republicans are expected to meet with Trump at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). McConnell’s attendance will mark the first time he and Trump have spoken since shortly after the 2020 election. McConnell broke with Trump over his refusal to accept the 2020 election results then and over the Jan. 6 riot, for which McConnell called Trump “practically and morally responsible.” But he did not vote to convict Trump after the impeachment trial.
Of the four GOP senators still in office who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, only Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) said he is likely to attend the meeting Thursday. Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) said he is not attending, while Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) said they had scheduling conflicts.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he doubted the meeting would get too in the weeds on policy, but instead focus more on politics, messaging and rallying together ahead of the election.
“It’s the first time we’ve all been together with him since he was president, certainly the first time a large group of us have been with him since the conviction, and I would expect he’d receive a lot of unifying messages,” he said. “I would expect it will be a very encouraging day for him.”
Theodoric Meyer, Mariana Alfaro and Marianne Levine contributed to this report.
