When Trump Started his Speech before the Capitol Riot, Talk on Parler turned to Civil War
Calls for civil war intensified on the right-leaning social media platform Parler on Jan. 6 as President Donald Trump spoke and urged his followers to march on the U.S. Capitol, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
In the minute between 12:15 and 12:16 p.m., Trump told the crowd to head to the Capitol and that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness.” One minute later, a Parler user wrote: “Time to fight. Civil war is upon us.” Another wrote: “We are going to have a civil war. Get ready!!”
Using a dictionary that researchers use to rate words for positivity or negativity, USA TODAY examined a trove of 80,146 Parler posts captured by analysts at the Social Media Analysis Toolkit before Parler went offline. The posts run from 9 a.m., when Trump supporters ramped up their Save America rally in Washington, to 2:30 p.m., when the Capitol was under full siege.