Early the next morning, when the meeting concluded, Mr. Trump posted the message on Twitter, urging his supporters to come to Washington on January 6, writing, “Be there, will be wild!”
The response to the message was immediate and electric.
It was quickly bolstered by prominent Trump supporters with influential followings, such as Alex Jones, the agent of conspiracy-laden media outlet Infowars, and right-wing podcaster Tim Pool.
In the darkest corners of the internet, Trump supporters on websites like TheDonald.win soon began discussing bringing handcuffs, body armor, shields, bats and pepper spray to Washington. Others spoke of committing violence.
“Why don’t we just kill them?” a person wrote on the chat board 4chan. “Every last Democrat, down to the last man, woman and child?”
Mr Trump’s tweet also had significant real-world effects.
Within days of it being posted, a pro-Trump organizing group called Women for America First changed its plans to hold a rally in Washington after Mr. Biden’s inauguration, moving the event to January 6. Around the same time, the commission showed prominent Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander registered the website WildProtest.com, which provided information about numerous protests in Washington on Jan. 6 with times, places, speakers and details about transportation.
Alexander sent a text message to an employee on Jan. 5, 2021, saying he believed Mr Trump would “order” him and his associates to march to the Capitol, the commission showed.