Donald Trump’s decision to pardon some 1,500 January 6 offenders was a spontaneous move that overrode his administration’s internal debate.
“Trump just said: ‘Fuck it: Release ’em all,’” one White House adviser told Axios.
That was, apparently, completely kosher with Vice President JD Vance, who told Fox News just last week that Trump’s more violent supporters didn’t deserve pardons.
“I think it’s very simple: Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6, and you had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” Vance told host Shannon Bream. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
But when push came to shove—as in, when Trump was ready to make his own executive call on the long-promised pardons—Vance’s dissenting opinion suddenly caved.
“Vance was 100 percent on board,” a Trump insider told Axios. “The president didn’t change his mind. He just made up his mind, and Vance got a little over his skis on Fox, but it’s no big deal.”
“Never get ahead of the boss,” another Trump transition source told the publication, “because you just never know.”
Trump’s decision to legally and unilaterally forgive his most aggressive supporters was, actually, wildly unpopular with the American public. A November Scripps News/Ipsos survey found that few Americans—just 30 percent—actually supported a legal reprieve for the Capitol rioters, versus an overwhelming 64 percent of the country that was against it. Just 1 percent of respondents believed that the pardons should be Trump’s first priority—let alone something that he issued a sweeping executive order for on his first day in office.
Trump has claimed for years that he would free the men and women who rioted through Congress in 2021, forcing the legislature to delay the certification of the presidential election results. In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press in December, the MAGA leader said he would act “very quickly” to release the January 6 defendants.
“They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” Trump said at the time.
The post The Stunning Logic Behind Trump’s Sweeping January 6 Pardons appeared first on New Republic.
