reporter: in just a few hours congress will be convening to certify the results of the electoral college and confirm president-elect joe biden s victory. reporter: crowds are already gathering for a pro-trump rally that the president says he will speak at. as many as 30,000 people expected- reporter: this is a day that happens every 4 years that usually no one pays attention to, but this year all eyes are on capitol hill. reporter: dozens of house and senate republicans are going to object to the certification of millions of legally cast votes. reporter: still the president is ramping up pressure on vice president pence to flip the outcome, even as pence himself reportedly told the president that he does not have that power. trump allies tell nbc news, they believe he will keep disputing the results, what allies say the president is increasingly desperate. (gavel bangs) irving: madam speaker!
i never thought that trump could turn out to be a good guy, but i thought maybe, all of this right wing authoritarian populist stuff, all this mussolini stuff, would just fade away quickly when he got in to office, that cooler heads would prevail, the conservative republican establishment would kind of take over and run things like a standard, run of the mill, right- wing presidency, as opposed to an existential threat to constitutional democracy. (audience clapping) reporter: donald trump today took to the rose garden to wave a white flag, agreeing to reopen the government without funding for his border wall. president trump: i am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government. (audience shouting)
american carnage was not what he was running against, it s what he was running for. (audience applauding) (audience applauding) reporter: we can now officially project that the democrats will take control of the house. reporter: now, for the first time, donald trump will have an effective opposition party that will be able to thwart his agenda. crowd: jamie! jamie! jamie! jamie! jamie! jamie raskin: thank you! crowd: jamie! jamie! jamie raskin: all right. our next speakers are very special people, if you guys would listen up for a second. just pay attention for one second. i m bringing on two of my three kids, who are gonna introduce me so i can make my speech. please welcome tommy raskin and tabitha raskin tonight. come on up!
woman: why don t you stop. president trump: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities. rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape. and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. this american carnage stops right here and stops right now. (audience applauding) jamie raskin: when donald trump talked about american carnage in his first inaugural address, it was a pivotal moment because american carnage, of course, was not a description of anything, it was really a promise on his part. when i saw the violence on january 6, i thought about the american carnage speech. he had foreshadowed the whole thing.
i mean it s just the classic propaganda tactics of authoritarian regimes. jamie raskin: i feel like i pulled an all-nighter. but i didn t pull all-nighter, but i think it s just that feeling like being back in college, just like, cramming for like, three hours straight. woman: going up. (footsteps pattering) abramson: do you think that impeachment is more on the table now? jamie raskin: i don t think it s any more or any less than it ever was. you know my attitude from the beginning has been that impeachment should not be a fetish for anybody, but it should not be a taboo for anybody either. it s not a panacea for everything that ails us in america, it s not gonna get health insurance to people and it s not gonna lower prescription drug prices. but it is the people s last line of self-defense against a president who insists upon acting like a king