Donald Trump made his return to Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with House and Senate Republicans, his first since sending the mob to "fight like hell" ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, as GOP lawmakers find themselves newly energized and reinvigorated by his bid to retake the White House.

Despite the federal charges against Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and his recent guilty verdict in an unrelated hush money trial, the Republican former president arrived Thursday emboldened as the party's presumptive nominee. He has successfully purged the GOP of critics, silenced most skeptics and enticed once-critical lawmakers aboard his MAGA-fueled campaign.

“There's tremendous unity in the Republican Party,” Trump said at a brief press conference after meeting with Senate Republicans on Tuesday afternoon. “This is an outstanding group of people. I'm with them 1,000% and there with me 1,000%. We agree just about on everything and if there isn’t, we work it out.”

“If it wasn’t fantastic, it gets worked out,” Trump said.

Trump spent about an hour each with House and Senate Republicans delivering free-wheeling remarks, fielding questions and discussing issues — including Russia and immigration, tax cuts and other priorities for a potential second term.

On Tuesday morning, a packed room of House Republicans sang “Happy Birthday” to Trump in the private breakfast meeting at GOP campaign headquarters across the street from the Capitol. The lawmakers gave him a baseball and bat from the annual congressional game. Trump complained that Taylor Swift hasn’t endorsed him, a source in the room told Spectrum News.

He also told House Republicans that he and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “would of been best friends and lovers if they weren’t in politics,” the source said.

Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi called Trump “deceitful” and “deranged” in a social media post responding to the comment.

In the afternoon, Trump met with Republican senators at their campaign headquarters where Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wy., gave him a birthday cake with the numbered candles that said “45” and “47,” referencing his first term as president and the second term Republicans hope he has beginning next year, according to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. Trump turns 78 on Friday.

“No real Republican with any credibility in the party is still blaming him [for Jan. 6]. Frankly some of his critics were in the room and were supportive and are supportive,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a possible Trump running mate contender, told reporters as he exited the meeting. 

Prominent Trump critic Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, attended the meeting after originally planning on skipping it after his flight to Florida was canceled due to torrential rains there. And outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky -- who once blamed Trump for the "disgraceful" attack that he called an "insurrection" -- now endorses Trump and spoke with him for the first time since he left office despite years of criticism and the former president’s racist attacks on McConnell’s wife and his former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

A New York Times photographer captured the two shaking hands as Republican senators applauded. McConnell said they “had a really positive meeting” and that "he and I got a chance to talk a little bit, shook hands a few times.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Trump “brought an extraordinary amount of energy and excitement and enthusiasm this morning” at a press conference after the House GOP meeting.

“We talked about how to grow this House majority and how he will help in doing so and then how we'll help him as well. And this is a unified effort by the party,” said Johnson, who led one of the lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, and had his biggest fundraising day yet after Trump's felony conviction. “President Trump has set fundraising records. He raised $53 million in the first 24 hours after the verdict in that terrible bogus trial in Manhattan. And I think that shows that people understand what's happening here.”

“Because people see that that is a threat to our republic. They see that as a threat to our system of justice, and they don't -- they want to push back,” Johnson added.

Prior to the Thursday meeting, the Republican speaker demurred over whether he's asked Trump to respect the peaceful transfer of presidential power and commit to not doing another Jan. 6. "Of course he respects that, we all do, and we've all talked about it, ad nauseam."

The Biden campaign denounced Trump’s return to Capitol Hill, issuing statements from members of the House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chaired the committee.

“Three years after waging a continual war on our democracy, Donald Trump, a convicted criminal, returns to Capitol Hill to hang out with the very same MAGA extremists who acted as his proxies on January 6th,” Crockett said. “Trump and his cronies attacked our free and fair elections, they attacked our peaceful transition of power, and they attacked our Capitol – and the American people are fighting back at the ballot box to defend democracy.”

"After inciting a deadly insurrection that defiled the halls of Congress, how dare Trump show his face on these grounds?" asked Thompson. "Congressional Republicans allow him to waltz in here when it’s known he has no regard for democracy. Since January 6th, Donald Trump, a twice-impeached convicted felon, has repeatedly doubled down on his disrespect for the rule of law and continues to sow hate and division. He still presents the same dire threat to our democracy that he did three years ago — and he’d be wise to head back to Mar-a-Lago and await his sentencing."

Biden was overseas Thursday attending a summit of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, but the president’s campaign unveiled a new ad blaming Trump for lighting the “fire” of Jan. 6 and threatening democracy. Biden's campaign called the visit to Capitol Hill "unhinged."

"Three years after inspiring a mob of violent insurrectionists to storm the Capitol, Donald Trump returned to the scene of the crime as a convicted felon, disgraced loser, and more unhinged than ever before," Biden-Harris 2024 Rapid Response Director Ammar Moussa said. "Between rants about law enforcement and attacks on the site of the RNC convention, Trump doubled down on an extreme agenda of higher taxes for working families, raising costs for the middle class, and fewer freedoms for Americans. Nothing Trump says today can erase his legacy on Capitol Hill — but his words offer a preview of the national nightmare we would endure in his second term." 

Many of those who once stood up to Trump are long gone from office and the Republicans who remain seem increasingly enthusiastic about the possibility of him retaking the White House, and the down-ballot windfall that could mean for their own GOP majorities in Congress.

Sen. John Thune, the GOP whip who is vying to replace McConnell as leader, told The Associated Press that he was interested in hearing from Trump about the fall election. “I think there’s an opportunity there to really make this a big win,” he said.

One reported comment of Trump’s immediately drew condemnation from Democrats. According to Punchbowl News, Trump told House Republicans that “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat up for reelection in a competitive race, quickly slammed Trump for the reported remark.

“Milwaukee makes the greatest beer, brats, and motorcycles in the world. It's home to some of our most vibrant communities, hardest workers, and is a part of what makes Wisconsin the best state in the nation,” Baldwin wrote on social media. “Donald Trump wouldn’t understand even if a jury told him so.”

"Add it to the list of things Donald Trump is wrong about," Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, wrote in a post of his own, alongisde a clown face emoji.

The Trump campaign claimed the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee was talking about “specifically violent crime and voter fraud,” but Wiconsin Republicans in the room and other Trump allies offered differing interpretations. 

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, insisted Trump was talking about the crime rate in Milwaukee, sharing an image of a Spectrum News article titled “Milwaukee ranks third for violent crimes nationwide” from May of last year based on data from 2021, though more recent data suggests violent crime has dropped precipitously. Rep. Bryan Steil said “I was in the room. President Trump did not say this,” while another Wisconsin congressman, Glenn Grothman, said Trump was speaking to concerns about Republicans’ electoral chances in urban centers. Rep. Tom Tiffany said Trump’s remarks were “in the context of election integrity.”

A Republican National Convention spokesperson told a local Milwaukee TV reporter that Trump  "was referencing the ongoing political game” about where protesters will be allowed to demonstrate during the convention.

The Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 15-18. Trump’s sentencing hearing in the New York case is scheduled for July 11.

“Donald Trump was talking about things that he thinks are horrible, but all of us lived through his presidency so right back at ya buddy, I’ll say that,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a Democrat, said at an unrelated press conference on Tuesday. “In Milwaukee, there are about 50,000 Republicans who live right here in the city so you’re calling their home horrible. I don’t quite understand that.”

In between meetings with House and Senate Republicans, Trump was expected to speak at the Business Roundtable downtown which routinely invites the presumptive presidential nominees to address the executives' group. Many potential priorities for a new White House administration are being formulated by a constellation of outside groups, including Project 2025, that are laying the groundwork for executive and legislative actions, though Trump has made clear he has his own agenda.

But the private meetings with House and Senate Republicans so close to the Capitol are infused with symbolism of Trump's return as the U.S. president who threatened the American tradition of the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

"It's frustrating," said former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who made his own unsuccessful run for Congress as a Maryland Democrat in the aftermath of Jan. 6, when police engaged in hand-to-hand fighting to stop Trump supporters who stormed the building trying to overturn President Joe Biden's election.

Dunn spoke of the "irony" of Trump returning to the area and lawmakers now embracing him. "It just shows the lack of backbone they have when they're truly putting party and person over country," he said. "And it's sad."

As democracies around the world come under threat from a far-rightward shift, experts warn that the U.S. system, once seemingly immune from authoritarian impulses, is at risk of populist and extremist forces like those that Trump inspired to sack the Capitol.

"This is just another example of House Republicans bending the knee to Donald Trump," said Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus.

Biden's campaign released a new ad ahead of Trump's visit, saying that the Republican ex-president is "pouring gasoline" by weighing pardons for Jan. 6 rioters and "is ready to burn it all down" when it comes to American democracy.

"Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime. January 6th was a crime against the Capitol, that saw Nazi and Confederate flags flying under the dome that Lincoln built," Pelosi said in a statement released by Biden's campaign. "It was a crime against the Constitution and its peaceful transfer of power, in a desperate attempt to cling to power. And it was a crime against Members, heroic police officers and staff, that resulted in death, injury and trauma that endure to this day."

"With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy," Pelosi added. "But make no mistake — Trump has already cemented his legacy of shame in our hallowed halls.”

Making Jan. 6 a cornerstone of his reelection campaign, Trump celebrates those who stormed the Capitol as "warriors" and "patriots," and he has vowed to pardon any number of the more than 1,300 America convicted of crimes for the assault on the seat of U.S. democracy.

Moreover, Trump has vowed to seek retribution by ousting officials at the U.S. Justice Department, which is prosecuting him in a four-count indictment to overturn the election ahead of the Jan. 6 attack and another case over storing classified documents at his Mar-A-Largo home.

Republicans, particularly in the House but increasingly in the Senate, are vigorously following his lead, complaining of an unfair justice system. The House voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress and is re-investigating the House committee that investigated Jan. 6.

Alongside Trump, the House and Senate GOP campaign arms scored some of their highest fundraising periods yet after a jury found him guilty in the New York hush money case.

When former GOP Speaker Paul Ryan on Fox News reiterated this week that he wouldn't be voting for Trump and wished Republicans had another choice for president, he was immediately ostracized by Trump allies.

"Paul Ryan, you're a piece of garbage," said Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas. "We should kick you out of the party."

Of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 and convict him on the charge of inciting the insurrection, only a few remain in office. Romney, who voted to impeach and convict, is retiring at the end of the year.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, did not attend Thursday's closed-door session with Trump.

But Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said he would join the Trump meeting at GOP senators' campaign headquarters, expecting "he's going to be the next president, so you have to work" together.

Asked if he was concerned about the direction of the Trump Republican Party, Cassidy said: "Let the day's own troubles be sufficient for the day. You can fill yourself up with anxiety about tomorrow, but will it change a thing? No."