- Trump’s pardons of the January 6th rioters was an act of contempt, and a violation of the Constitutional standards he claims to uphold;
- Trump and his minions show contempt for an Episcopal bishop at Washington’s National Cathedral who pled for mercy to gays and transgenders;
- Connie Willis on Biden’s pardons and the rationales for them that Trump and his fans cannot comprehend.
Following directly from previous post. What Trump did do on his first day in office was pardon some 1500 rioters (he called them hostages!!) who attacked the Capital in 2021. So much for the party of law and order (thought it’s not the first time).
NY Times, Opinion by the Editorial Board, 20 Jan 2025: Trump’s Opening Act of Contempt
On Jan. 6, 2021, Philip Sean Grillo, a former Republican district leader in Queens, jumped through a broken window at the U.S. Capitol with a megaphone. He pushed his way past a line of Capitol Police officers and opened the exterior doors of the Rotunda to allow other rioters to enter the building and trash it. “We stormed the Capitol!” he exulted on video, and was seen smoking marijuana and high-fiving other Donald Trump supporters who were fighting the police. “We shut it down! We did it!”
Nearly three years later, a federal jury convicted Mr. Grillo of multiple offenses. But he did not lose heart: Last month, when he was sentenced to a year in prison, he had a special taunt for the federal district judge who sentenced him, Royce Lamberth.
“Trump’s going to pardon me anyways,” he yelled at the judge, just before he was handcuffed and led away.
He was right. On Monday evening, several hours after President Trump was inaugurated, he fulfilled a promise he had repeatedly made to pardon nearly all the rioters who attacked and desecrated the Capitol in 2021 to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified. Mr. Grillo and about 1,500 other rioters received full pardons from Mr. Trump, while 14 others received commuted sentences.
A presidential pardon for Mr. Grillo not only makes a mockery of his jury’s verdict and of Judge Lamberth’s sentence. Mr. Trump’s mass pardon effectively makes a mockery of a justice system that has labored for four years to charge nearly 1,600 people who tried to stop the Constitution in its tracks, a system that convicted 1,100 of them and sentenced more than 600 of them to prison.
Most important, the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisers. It loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.
Say what you will about the pardons Biden issued —
The presidential pardon system is usually abused in modern times by departing presidents giving a final gift to cronies, donors or relatives, and those breaches of trust are bad enough. Mr. Biden issued dubious pardons to his son and, as he walked out the door, several other family members, as well as pre-emptive pardons to an array of current and former government officials for noncriminal actions, all to protect them from potential Republican retribution — an expansive use of pardon power that further warps its purpose.
But what Mr. Trump did Monday is of an entirely different scope. He used a mass pardon at the beginning of his term to write a false chapter of American history, to try to erase a crime committed against the foundations of American democracy.
— Trump interpreted this, in his simple-minded way, of being evidence of guilt. Because his rioters were obviously guilty! And so — yet again: projection.
The piece ends:
On his first day back in public office, Mr. Trump provoked the danger that the judge dreads, setting loose hundreds of people found guilty of participating in a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol — not because they committed no crimes but because they committed their crimes in his name. In doing so, he invites such crimes to happen again.
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And
Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 20 Jan 2025: The right’s propaganda machine gets its Jan. 6 pardons
President Donald Trump’s January 6 pardons mark the culmination of the MAGA media’s yearslong campaign to remove the stain from his supporters’ violent assault on the U.S. Capitol — and for their own culpability in that attempted coup.
On the first day of his second term, Trump is apparently giving clemency to every participant in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Speaking to reporters while signing executive orders in the Oval Office, he said he would be signing full pardons for “approximately 1,500 people” while providing six commutations. He appears to be wiping the slate clean for all of what he has ludicrously termed the “J6 hostages,” including hundreds convicted of violent assaults on law enforcement. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of crimes including seditious conspiracy for his role in the attack and sentenced to 22 years in prison, is getting out tonight.
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And
Slate, Aymann Ismail, 21 Jan 2025: The Trump Pardons That Will Haunt America
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed dozens of executive orders that sought to reach into nearly every corner of America life. Yet that was overshadowed by Trump’s unprecedented, sweeping pardons and commutations for nearly all of the roughly 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Among those pardoned were high-profile figures convicted of seditious conspiracy and violent assaults that left dozens of police officers injured. Though Trump had promised the move, its broad scope reportedly surprised even members of his inner circle. Just days before being sworn in as vice president, J.D. Vance told reporters that the most violent perpetrators “obviously” shouldn’t be pardoned.
The piece is an interview with Jacob Ware, co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.
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More on the theme of Republican/conservative hypocrisy.
NPR, 21 Jan 2025: Bishop confronts Trump during sermon at inaugural prayer service
During a prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral Tuesday, the Episcopal bishop of Washington directly confronted President Trump while he and Vice President J.D. Vance were seated in the front row.
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” Bishop Mariann Budde said in her 15-minute sermon. “Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” said Budde, as she appeared to look towards the president.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
This came just one day after Trump issued a slate of executive orders, including one which has a section dedicated to “recognizing that women are biologically distinct from me,” one that declared a national emergency at the country’s southern border and issued several others related to immigration, including one attempting to do away with birthright citizenship.
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Trump and his fans were enraged.
JMG, 21 Jan 2025: Cultists Rage After “Woke” Bishop Urges Trump To “Find Compassion” For Migrants And LGBTQ Children [VIDEO]
A round-up of responses to that sermon, from various X tweets, which I’ll excerpt:
- JD Vance starts laughing and Melania Trump is smiling at the National Prayer Service when they hear “let us pray for the most vulnerable.”
- This woman should never step foot in the National Cathedral again — in any capacity.
- Todd Starnes: Franklin Graham tells me on my podcast that the National Cathedral has fallen into the hands of LGBT activists. So, it’s not surprising this “lady bishop” spewed hate at Donald Trump today. National Cathedral has become a sanctuary of Satan.
- The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.
WWJD? It continues to astonish me that conservatives who claim to revere Jesus, and the Founders, continually defy both. Trump and his minions are all vile. And I don’t know why the supposed “Christian” base of his supporters does not see that. Clearly I’m misunderstanding something. I am wrong for taking Christians at their word, perhaps. I should have learned better by now.
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There are too many commentaries about Trump and the inauguration and his first day to keep up with. But I’ll quote from SF writer Connie Willis’ post yesterday; she understands.
Facebook, CW Daily’s Post, 20 Jan 2025: Some Thoughts to Get You Through Inauguration Day–and the Next Four Years
–Biden pre-emptively pardoned a number of people Trump and Kash Patel have announced their intention of going after: Dr. Fauci, General Mark Milley, the members of the January 6 Committee (including Liz Cheney, Trump’s number one target) and all their staffers, plus the police officers who testified before the January 6th committee.
–Biden said of the pardons: “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgement that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense. Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
–Here’s Dr. Fauci’s response, which I think is pitch perfect: “Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime, and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me. The fact is, however, that the mere articulation of these baseless threats and the potential that they will be acted upon, creat immeasurable and intolerable distress for me and my family. For these reasons, I acknowledge and appreciate the action that President Biden has taken today on my behalf.”
–The sputtering fury from MAGAs and Republican Congressmen and Senators, screaming that they’ll go after them in state courts and open new investigations into their actions, shows that these pardons were completely necessary. Thank God Biden did it. And that he did it at the very last minute so that Trump didn’t have the chance to forestall the pardons.
These motivations are too subtle for Trump and his fans to understand, apparently. To them, everyone is guilty, but if Trump has the power, he’ll pardon the guilty on his side. Because it’s not about law and order, it’s about his tribe vs. everyone else.
