People wait in line at the Waco Regional Airport ahead of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s arrival on March 25, 2023 in Waco, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump opened the first rally of his 2024 campaign with a recording of imprisoned Jan. 6 defendants singing the national anthem.
The song played after Trump walked on stage in Waco, Texas, The announcer asked the people in the crowd to stand and place their hands over their hearts.
The tune, which is a collage of the national anthem and a recording of Trump reading the Pledge of Allegiance, hit the number-one spot on several major music platforms. Trump helped to produce the song, dubbed “Justice for All.”
Trump noted the popularity of the song, saying that “those people [Jan. 6 defendants] mean a lot for our people.
“The abuses of power we are seeing in our government will go down as some of the most depraved and corrupt in history,” Trump said near the beginning of the rally, a likely reference both to the plight of Jan. 6 defendants and ongoing GOP investigations into the “weaponization” of the federal government.
“The Biden regime’s weaponization of federal law enforcement is something out of Stalinist Russia,” Trump added.
“A third-world banana republic—that’s what we’ve become.”
The move is a bold one for Trump, who has over the past two years faced a litany of allegations from the now-defunct January 6 Committee.
That committee and other Trump opponents accused Trump and his allies of being the mastermind of a plot to overthrow the government. Jan. 6 was painted as a “violent insurrection.”
These claims have come under increasing scrutiny. The day before the rally, a prosecutor in a Jan. 6 trial admitted that DC police officers acted as provocateurs on Jan. 6.
Those arrested in connection to the events of Jan. 6 have faced conditions in their detainment that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has described as “nothing short of human rights abuses.” Greene more than once toured the facility where many such defendants are held.
After a December 2021 visit to the D.C. Metropolitan Jail, where many arrested in connection to Jan. 6 are housed, Greene said, “[Jan. 6 defendants] have been beaten by the guards, they are called ‘white supremacists,’ they are denied religious services, haircuts, shaving, the ability to trim their fingernails.”
Greene continued, “They’re denied time with their attorney, they are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there, they’re denied bail and are being held there without bail.”
Aside from all these alleged violations of their liberty, Greene reported, the defendants “have been told that they have to denounce President Donald Trump” and “that their views are the views of cult members.”
The defendants have also been denied religious services and access to clergy.
Greene ruled that the Jan. 6 defendants have been treated “worse than we treat terrorists in Gitmo [Guantanamo Bay].”
Many in Congress have strayed away from the issue entirely.
Trump has said that he would pardon Jan. 6 protesters if he retakes the White House.
The proceeds from the sale of the song go toward the legal funds of some of the Jan. 6 prisoners, according to the closing screen of the official music video.