They are being treated so unfairly
The criminal who wants to be the criminal president again is promising his goons he will pardon them if he gets to be the criminal president again.
Former president Donald Trump suggested Saturday night that he will pardon the rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol if he is elected president in 2024.
Trump, who has teased but not confirmed another run for president, has repeatedly criticized the prosecution of people who violently stormed the Capitol to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. But his comments at a Texas rally on Saturday marked the first time he dangled the prospect of pardons, an escalation of his broader effort to downplay the deadly events of Jan. 6.
It’s more than that. It’s an underlining of his contempt for the laws, a promise to flout the laws and norms, an announcement of his intention to be a lawless dictator, a boast about his affinity for violence and terrorism.
“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” he said Saturday near the end of a lengthy campaign rally in Conroe, a city about 40 miles north of Houston. “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
Yes, it’s so unfair not to let people bash their way into the Capitol and search for legislators to kill with impunity.
At his Texas rally, Trump also bashed the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, as he continued to spread baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him.
“This hasn’t happened to all of the other atrocities that took place recently,” he said. “Nothing like this has happened. What that ‘unselect’ committee is doing and what the people are doing that are running those prisons, it’s a disgrace.”
Eloquent as ever.
Since leaving office, Trump and other Republicans have aggressively defended those who broke into the Capitol as patriots. On the first anniversary of the riots, Trump released a scathing statement attacking President Biden and the events marking the anniversary as “political theater.”
“The Democrats want to own this day of January 6th so they can stoke fears and divide America,” he said in a statement, “I say, let them have it because America sees through theirs lies and polarizations.”
Yes, for sure, that whole thing was the fault of the Democrats.
Of course he refused to pardon the first time around, and they were furious at him.
This divisive accusation, you know, is pretty divisive in itself when they attack the “other guys” as being divisive. Like we’d all be unified if the Democrats were only just like us. Nugent called Springsteen divisive…and a commie.
Calling someone a commie is not going to inspire unity. One of the things that I had hoped would fall with the Berlin Wall was red-baiting. But it’s back in full force, especially readily available for the unifiers to use against the “other guys.”
GW – Trump made a lot of promies, including paying the legal bills of those who physically assaulted non-Trumpers, at his initial campaign rallies. He’s never made good on such a promise. How anyone thinks this will change is very similar to the “tigers eating faces party” meme.
It appears that a huge fault line is opening up in American society, between those to whom the law applies, and those to whom (in their own opinion) it does not.
Nixon tried to put himself above the law, and was found wanting. If Biden does not fight back against this with everything he has got, he might as well kiss his office goodbye, ride off into the sunset, and let someone else take over.
Trump needs a long stretch in the hoosegow for incitement to sedition. Indeed, it mght even do him some good.
Right. They never do this to the other guys. There were no hearings on Benghazi. There were no hearings on “her emails”. There were no hearings on the failed investment in Whitewater. There were no hearings on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Crickets. It never happens to the other guys.
Trump’s repetitive third-grade command of the English language — coupled with the quality of complaint and accusations about “unfairness” usually encountered in late night bars and family reunions serving alcohol — somehow managed to convince a mostly middle and working class electorate that he was “one of them.”
If there is a positive thing about Trump, it’s that he never fails to humiliate his sycophants. All of the supposedly respectable Republicans who still support Trump (or at least refuse to disavow him) have been insisting that January 6 was not about overturning the election. And then Trump just comes right out and says it.
It’s often said that the real danger is someone who can combine Trump’s (bizarre, repugnant) appeal to his base with a sense of subtlety and polish that would provide better pretexts for the horrible things they want to do. But ironically, Trump’s willingness to “say the quiet part out loud” is a big part of his appeal for much of his base. I don’t think they’ll rally behind a Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton or Ted Cruz who tries to be cute and smarmy and not come out and say they want to punish the people they hate, etc. Ron DeSantis is trying to thread that needle, and we’ll see how that goes.
It reminds me, in a way, of how the “intelligent design” people were hamstrung by the fact that their base of support — the school board trustees, and the people who would vote for such officials — didn’t want to stick to the pretext that this was all non-religiously-motivated scientific criticism of evolution. The kinds of people who were willing to fight to put ID in schools couldn’t help but say that it was about fighting for Jesus, which made it difficult for them to win in court or in broader public opinion.
Yes. I think the idea of combining Trump’s appeal to his base with a sense of subtlety and polish is hilariously oxymoronic, because the crudity and vulgarity ARE Trump’s appeal to his base. They don’t like him despite that but because of it.
Or, no, oxymoronic isn’t what I mean, is it. The idea is combing the crudity that his base loves with other qualities that the other levels would love. That’s not an oxymoron.
But yes it no doubt is as impossible as scientific intelligent design. If Trump had the other qualities they would murder the monster part of him. The monster is the one that gets the veto.
Wasn’t it Trump who claimed that the lawbreakers on 1/6 were “antifa”? So basically he’s saying that he’ll start pardoning antifa protestors for whatever they do that breaks the law, which includes (one presumes) breaking the skulls of MAGA-hat goons.
@ Mike H #2
Legal bills cost money. He never follows through on statements (they’re not promises) that he will pay money. Pardons don’t cost money. Pardons are an exercise of in-your-face naked power. He likes that. He would do it in a heartbeat if he were ever in office again. He didn’t the first time because it might have kiboshed any remaining chance he had to stymie the change of power and resist the election results.
@maddog1129 – and as Joe Arpaio found out, accepting a pardon was an admission of guilt.