Hang the J6 Pardons Around Trump’s Neck

It was a morally bad decision. It could and should be a politically damaging one too.

JVL made this point yesterday, but in case you missed it: How’s Trump’s honeymoon period going? Is he enjoying a wave of well wishes as he begins his new term? Are Americans giving him the benefit of the doubt?

According to the poll aggregator at FiveThirtyEight, he is, by his standards, enjoying unusually strong numbers—but is still more disliked than liked.

Happy Thursday.

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The families and friends of prisoners awaiting release continue to wait outside the Washington, D.C., jail in the United States on January 22, 2025. More than 200 people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol were freed Tuesday after President Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Pardoner-in-Chief

by William Kristol

On Day Three of the Trump presidency, I am at once alarmed and encouraged. I turn to Walt Whitman for guidance.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Like Whitman, I may seem to contradict myself—though unlike the author of “Song of Myself,” I don’t claim to contain multitudes. I barely contain enough thoughts to write this newsletter every morning.

But at this moment I do believe it’s reasonable to be both alarmed and encouraged.

Trump has opted to begin his presidency with shock and awe. Its effects are alarming and shouldn’t be underestimated. Trump is doing a lot, some of it is (unfortunately) well thought through, and it will have real effects on a host of federal programs and policies. The authoritarian agenda is off to a fast start on many fronts, from radical changes in immigration policy to the across-the-board politicization of the federal government.

What’s more, the indirect effects of Trump’s rhetoric and actions beyond the government itself are already proving significant. We will be living for a while not just with a less tolerant, a less decent, and a less lawful government, but in a less tolerant, a less decent, a less lawful society.

So all is not well. And as Trump’s executive orders are implemented and as the Republican Congress passes Trumpist legislation, things will get worse.

But the price you pay for shocking policies shockingly announced is that, while some people are intimidated, others recoil. And the price you pay for trying to manufacture awe is that, while some people bow down, others step back, look behind the curtain and see nothing awe-inspiring. Quite the contrary.

The most shocking thing Trump has done is the blanket pardons (with a few commutations) for the January 6th convicts. Polling from before Trump’s announcement suggested a lack of public support for pardoning violent offenders, and my sense of the reaction since is that there’s considerable public hostility to Trump’s action. Even Sean Hannity, interviewing Trump in the Oval Office last night, made clear he was uncomfortable with it.

Trump must have hoped, even if what he did was unpopular, that the issue will go away soon. “Fuck it: Release ’em all,” he’s reported to have said as he decided on the blanket pardon. But with people like Kash Patel up for confirmation, the pardons can and will remain front and center. And there are many other nominees, in the Justice Department and elsewhere, who can be asked about the pardons over the next weeks and months. Attention to the pardons isn’t going away.

Nor are the freed convicts. One has already been rearrested for new crimes. He won’t be the only one. The Proud Boys will march, yell, and threaten. The Oath Keepers will show up on Capitol Hill.

The task of the opposition is simple: To wrap those pardons tightly around Trump’s neck. To make him our pardoner-in-chief.

Republicans may think they can dismiss this all by bringing up Joe Biden’s pardons in response. There’s no need for anyone to defend Biden’s pardons. I certainly won’t. But talking about Biden’s pardons simply keeps the issue of pardons alive. And if people want to disapprove of both Biden’s and Trump’s pardons, that’s fine. Perhaps Trump’s favorability numbers will fall towards Biden’s level.

In addition, I doubt that some other of Trump’s early actions—and especially the insistence that they go into immediate and shocking effect—are helping him. Are Americans proud that 1,600 Afghans who worked with American soldiers during the war or are family members of U.S. military personnel, and who had been vetted and cleared for entry to the United States, abruptly had their entry revoked by the Trump administration? Are Americans pleased that the process for judging and approving National Institutes of Health grants to work on diseases was suddenly interrupted mid-stream?

And even the Wall Street Journal editorial page is worried about all the grift: “Donald Trump doesn’t always separate his personal interests from his public obligations, and a howling example is his sudden new status as a crypto billionaire. The President is inviting trouble with what looks like remarkably poor judgment.”

The size and speed of the Trump ocean liner is impressive. But it seems to me to be barreling towards some icebergs. The loudspeakers aboard are boasting at top volume of all that is being accomplished. But one wonders whether, below the surface, Trump’s ship isn’t beginning to take on some water.

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The Abandonment Never Stops

by Will Selber

For most Americans, the Global War on Terrorism ended on August 31, 2021 when the last American forces left Afghanistan. However, for a motley crew of Afghan combat veterans, the war continued. Over the last three years, thousands of Americans, some of the civilians, created an underground railway to save Afghans.

That railway may have come to an end. On January 21, President Donald Trump, whose Doha Agreement with the Taliban doomed our Afghan allies, placed another roadblock for thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing from the tyrannical rule of a gender apartheid regime that both he and President Biden helped create. His executive order suspending the refugee program puts 2,000 Afghans previously approved to move to the United States in limbo.

What does this mean for many innocent Afghans who have already been thoroughly vetted by American intelligence professionals like me? For those who helped the United States fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban at great personal risk? It means they will wait in longer lines as they undergo even more extreme vetting. Which, for many of them, could mean death.

That’s not to say there are no dangerous elements within the Afghan refugee population. Late last year, an Afghan national was arrested in Oklahoma City for his connection to the Islamic State. The Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban remain a clear and present danger to the United States.

Nevertheless, many innocent Afghans will die for the sins of a few. This morning, after the news broke, my text messages and emails were overwhelmed with questions about this program and what it will mean. One man, whose family has survived for years on a shoestring budget from veterans charities like mine, asked me, “Brother, how much longer will my family wait?” They’re running out of options.

Everyone should have known this day was coming. President Trump’s order was easy enough to predict given his past statements about all immigrants, especially Muslims. President Biden did help create a bureaucratic pipeline that saved tens of thousands of Afghans—one that, in effect, legitimized the work already being done by Afghanistan veteran–led organizations. He never trumpeted their successes because to do so would also be to remind the world of his failure to oversee an orderly, successful end to the war. Had Biden spoken out more, perhaps more Afghan refugees would have made it here safely.

Nobody knows what the future will hold for thousands of my Afghan brothers and sisters who want nothing more than to flee the Taliban regime that America promised to destroy but, in effect, helped to build. It’s another sad, tragic twist in America’s failed wars.

And as always, the innocent Afghans will pay the price.

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Quick Hits

TOO MUCH WORK: The president sat down with Sean Hannity last night for an Oval Office interview that his political arm had billed as “may be the most watched interview in history.” We’ll wait to see the Nielsen ratings. As for the substance, Trump was asked to defend his pardon for January 6th rioters. And his answers boiled down to a few points: They didn’t really do all that much damage, they really were punished too harshly, and it really would have been too annoying and time-consuming to have gone through the cases individually to determine if an individual deserved clemency.

“Most of the people were absolutely innocent. Okay. But forgetting all about that, these people have served, horribly, a long time. It would be very, very cumbersome to go and look—you know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people,” Trump told Hannity.

When Trump insisted that the rioters had the right to protest the vote, Hannity sheepishly interjected, noting that, perhaps, they didn’t have the right to “invade” the Capitol. “Some of those people with the police—true—but they were very minor incidents, okay, you know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time,” Trump replied. “They were very minor incidents and it was time.”

As just one example, officer Michael Fannone suffered “several Taser shocks in the back of his neck before things got worse. ‘Some guys started getting a hold of my gun and they were screaming out, “Kill him with his own gun,”’ he said.” Good thing there were no major incidents.

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WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?: Kash Patel, President Trump’s pick to prematurely replace now-former FBI Director Christopher Wray (who was also Trump’s pick), has long been an advocate for those convicted for various crimes committed at the Capitol on January 6th. On the homepage today, Thomas Joscelyn and Norm Eisen put the pieces together to reveal just how radical that advocacy might be:

The Senate should start by fully investigating Patel’s role in producing and promoting “Justice for All,” a song performed by the so-called “J6 Prison Choir.” Patel has described helping to produce the track, which features a recording of January 6th inmates in a Washington, D.C. jail performing the Star-Spangled Banner. Separate audio of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was spliced together with their performance to create the single.

Patel aggressively promoted the song, using it to portray January 6th rioters as victims of the American justice system. He described the choir’s members as “political prisoners” who were “incarcerated as a result of their involvement in the January 6, 2021 protest for election integrity.” Patel also told Gateway Pundit, a far-right conspiracy site, that the song was produced by “like-minded Americans who wanted to . . . destroy the two-tier system of justice that is rotting America.”

The identity of the choir members who performed “Justice for All” has always been murky. We reviewed dozens of Patel’s social media posts promoting the track, often with the hashtag #J6PC, as well as several of his media appearances. We could not find any instances in which he identified its performers. And Patel reportedly declined to name the choir’s members when asked by the press.

We now know why: The choir includes violent rioters who assaulted law enforcement officers on January 6th.

Are back-the-blue, law-and-order Republicans really going to confirm, as our nation’s top cop, a guy who defends people who attacked law enforcement officers? Probably. Read the whole thing.

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PARDON? PASS.: At least one recipient of a Trump pardon is rejecting it. The New York Times has the story of Pamela Hemphill of Boise, Idaho:

She said she did not want a pardon.

“Absolutely not,” Ms. Hemphill said in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s an insult to the Capitol Police, to the rule of law and to the nation. If I accept a pardon, I’m continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6.”

Ms. Hemphill, 71, who was called “MAGA Granny” in some news headlines, has said that she no longer supports Mr. Trump or believes his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. She said that a therapist had helped change her view of the attack by telling her she was “not a victim of Jan. 6; I was a volunteer.”

“I lost my critical thinking,” she said on Wednesday, reflecting on her involvement in the riot and the “Stop the Steal” movement. “Now I know it was a cult, and I was in a cult.”

Hemphill deserves praise for renouncing the insurrection and Trumpism. But as for the other 1,600-odd January 6th convicts Trump pardoned—perhaps she can refer them to her therapist too.

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