Former President Donald Trump is holding his first rally of 2022 on January 15, an event where he's likely to hit back at "weak Republicans," the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 Capitol riot.
Trump's rally comes a week after the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, during which a mob of his supporters breached the Capitol. The former president has denied he bears any responsibility for the violence that transpired and has started dismissing that an insurrection occurred in January, calling the 2020 election the "real insurrection."
Trump's speech at the rally is set to begin at 7 p.m. mountain time and will take place at Canyon Moon Ranch in Florence, Arizona. Newsmax will live stream his remarks.
The former president is at the center of the investigation of the House committee looking into the Capitol riot and has fought the committee's quest for many of his records. Trump accused the committee of being a partisan attack on him and questioned why they weren't focused more on investigating the election, which Trump maintains was stolen from him.
"Does anybody notice that they want to stay as far away from that topic as possible, the numbers don't work for them, or even come close. The only thing they can do is not talk about it," Trump said in a December 21 statement.
Trump categorized the Capitol riot as a "completely unarmed protest of the rigged election," prompting criticism from Republican legislators and former administration officials.
Representative Liz Cheney, who was appointed to the committee by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, told CBS News' Face the Nation called Trump's upcoming remarks "very concerning." However, she added that it's "not surprising," because Trump knows that his comments about the election being stolen "caused violence."
Alyssah Farah, who resigned as Trump's director of strategic communications ahead of the riot, told CNN that the smarter move would be for the former president to avoid causing controversy on Thursday. She said the rally is a sign that he's "still getting terrible advice" from the people around him.
Trump announced he was canceling his January 6 rally two days before the anniversary, saying it was because of the "total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans and the Fake News Media." He said he'll discuss "many of those important topics" that he planned on highlighting on January 6th at his rally on Saturday.
"I look forward to seeing our Great American patriots in Arizona next weekend for a big rally to Save America!" Trump said in a statement.
Even some of Trump's staunchest allies have criticized him for failing to see how his behavior was contributing to the Capitol riot and allowing his claims about election fraud to reach a boiling point. The criticism created a divide between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who Trump has criticized for being an ineffective leader and a possible target for a primary challenge.
The criticism has done little to temper Trump's claims of election fraud and he maintains that he's the rightful winner of the 2020 election and warned that if it isn't solved, Republicans will be dissuaded from voting in the future.
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