Constitutional Opinion No. 2026-0713
Case Information
- Content Scored
- Speech Urging Supporters to Go Home (January 6, 2021)
- Source
- The White House / Miller Center archive (millercenter.org)
- Author
- President Donald J. Trump
- Publication Date
- 2021-01-06
- Content Type
- Presidential Statement
- Opinion Issued
- 2026-07-19
- AFCS Version
- 1.0
Holding
This is the internally contradictory message released during the Capitol riot, and it is the constitutional inverse of the same author's statements over the following days — which is why the Standard, scoring content and not team, cannot score it anywhere near them. It contains genuinely aligned elements: it tells supporters you have to go home now, and invokes order — we have to have peace, we have to have law and order. Had that been the whole of it, this would have scored with the January 7 and 13 statements. But in the same breath, while the certification was under violent assault, it repeats that we had an election that was stolen from us, it was a landslide election, and this was a fraudulent election — assertions tested and rejected in the courts, advanced at the very moment a mob was acting on them. And it does not condemn the violence; it expresses affection for those carrying it out: we love you, you are very special. That combination — validating the grievance that animated the breach, declining to condemn the breach, and professing love for the participants, while asking them to disperse — strains the commitment on which the Standard's order rests. The Permanence of the Constitutional Order (XVII) is not served by a message that, during the disruption of a certified count, reasserts it was fraudulent; the honoring of the citizens verdict (II) is not served by calling a certified, court-tested result a stolen landslide; and Law and Order (XVIII), though invoked, is undercut by the refusal to condemn and the affection expressed. 44 here versus 84 for the same author's January 7 message the next day (0711) — the constitutional character of the content flipped, and the score with it. Tier 1 nets to 44; with a Tier 2 dragged down by unsubstantiated claims and internal contradiction, the result is 44 — Mixed.
It is the judgment of this Court that Opinion No. 2026-0713 is hereby entered into the record, in accordance with the America First Constitutional Standard. The score stands. The reasoning is published. The record is public.