Trump using Jan. 6 riot as campaign rallying cry

On Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump spoke on the Ellipse near the White House on the heels of his 2020 election loss, telling supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol «peacefully and patriotically,» but also proclaiming, «If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.»

Soon after, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, and Trump's efforts to overturn the election are now at the center of his federal election subversion case. (The case is currently stayed while the appeals process plays out, and Trump has denied all wrongdoing.)

On Saturday, on the third anniversary Jan. 6, Trump is spending the day in Iowa, delivering his closing message before the Jan. 15 GOP caucuses, continuing to use the events of Jan. 6 as a rallying cry.

On the campaign trail, Trump has downplayed the violence that ensued that day and has called those charged and convicted in attack «hostages.»

«The J6 hostages, I call them. Nobody has been treated ever in history so badly as those people nobody's ever been treated in our country,» Trump said at a rally Friday in Iowa on the eve of the anniversary.

Jailing those who broke into the Capitol that day, he said, is «one of the saddest things in the history of our country.» He's said he would grant clemency to a «large portion» of them.

In the three years since the assault on the U.S. Capitol, federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,265 defendants across nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and secured convictions and incarceration for more than 460 people, according to numbers from the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. released Friday.

Trump's claims of widespread election fraud have been rejected in at least 60 court cases,according to PolitiFact.

In referring to Jan.