Trump: J6 Convicts Are ’Unbelievable Patriots’

Plus: Unpacking the “bloodbath hoax“ sideshow.

Wow, what a strong showing for Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential elections this weekend—reelected with 87 percent support! Amazing the results you can get when you invade neighboring countries, kill the dissenters there, and then make the remaining citizens vote under armed watch.

Happy Monday.

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(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos via Getty Images.)

Trump’s J6 Salute

Nine years into the Trump era, many of us have become inured to the guy—to his repulsive statements, his execrable behavior, his contemptible character. I’ve (mostly!) learned to curb my own outrage—one has, after all, to keep calm and carry on.

But take a look at this clip from Trump’s rally Saturday in Vandalia, Ohio:

“Please rise,” booms the announcer, “for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.” Then, as the speaker system plays a recorded mash-up of the national anthem sung by participants in the January 6th insurrection, Trump melodramatically salutes.

He salutes the insurrectionists.

Trump doubled down once he took the microphone. Those duly tried and convicted for rioting on January 6th, in prison for their violent effort to overturn a free and fair election, Trump described as “unbelievable patriots” and “hostages.” Once again, he indicated he’d pardon them.

The promise to pardon is noteworthy. Trump knows what he’s doing. He abused the pardon power in his first term. Now he’s running on a much broader promise to pardon those who have acted lawlessly and violently on his behalf.

This promise of pardon is not so much about the past. It’s about the future.

What constraints would there be on those who would serve in a Trump second term? The rule of law? The courts? No problem. Go ahead, follow Trump’s wishes rather than the law’s constraints. Here’s a presidential pardon.

And for those on the outside, the paramilitary types Trump will have no hesitation in rallying to intimidate opponents and enforce his wishes and his will? No problem. Go ahead and break a few laws. Here’s a presidential pardon.

So the promise to abuse the pardon power is one of many reasons to expect, if Trump wins, a truly reckless and lawless administration. An unconstrained pardon power can overcome many guardrails.

But I come back to the salute.

I’ve never served in the military. So I’ve never really saluted or been saluted. But I served in the White House, and traveled with Vice President Quayle, and was near the men and women of the military a fair amount then. And I’ve been around the military a bit in subsequent years.

I’ve seen many salutes. And I’ve always found them oddly moving. They’re gestures of respect and acknowledgments of order. They embody a kind of rule of law, a setting aside of personal feelings. You salute the rank, not the man.

Presidents as civilians probably shouldn’t return salutes (they didn’t, I believe, until pretty recently). But if they do so now, they do so as a gesture of respect. Respect for the military who are serving our nation. And respect for the nation, for the republic, and for the Constitution that upholds it.

And to see Trump saluting the insurrectionists, the Americans he persuaded to violently break the law in the service of undermining the Constitution, was unnerving.

But perhaps also clarifying.

Trump salutes the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol.

Trump supports criminals.

The rest of us support the republic.

 —William Kristol

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Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Another moment from Trump’s Saturday rally bears dwelling on. It came as Trump was discussing China’s hopes of ramping up auto manufacturing in Mexico to export into the U.S. market. “You’re not going to hire Americans, and you’re going to sell the cars to us?” Trump said. “No, we’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every car that comes across the line.”

“If I get elected,” Trump went on. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole—that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not gonna sell those cars.”

When Donald Trump promises a “bloodbath for the country,” people’s ears prick up. Lots of outlets reported the remark: “Trump says country faces ‘bloodbath’ if Biden wins in November,” read the illustrative Politico headline.

Then the anti-anti-Trump media critics waded in: There they go again, taking Trump out of context! Trump hadn’t been talking about a real bloodbath, these people insisted; in context, he had obviously been talking about an economic bloodbath for the auto industry.

Here was Ohio Rep. Mike Turner yesterday on ABC: “The president’s statements concerning bloodbath were about the auto industry.”

Here was Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota on CNN: “With regard to the autoworkers that he was talking to, he is showing them or he’s telling them what has been an economic downturn for them.”

And here was Sen. Bill Cassidy on NBC: “You can also look at the definition of bloodbath and it could be an economic disaster, and so if he’s speaking about the auto industry, in particular in Ohio, then you can take it a little bit more in context.”

Meanwhile, online, huge accounts like “End Wokeness” and the GOP’s RNC Research arm were racking up millions of views trumpeting a supposed “bloodbath hoax” in the media. “After watching the bloodbath hoax, these headlines should make you very happy,” Libs of TikTok tweeted alongside articles about media layoffs. “The media is truly the enemy of the people.”

We should note this is silly nonsense. Trump is often a vague speaker—sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose—but the one thing he plainly did not mean by “bloodbath” was just turmoil in the auto industry: That auto-industry turmoil, he said, is “gonna be the least of it” in the “bloodbath for the country.” Will that promised nationwide bloodbath be literal, or simply economic? Well, Trump didn’t specify—but neither did the news outlets that simply reported his remarks.

But all this is beside the real point. The point here isn’t that the media was unfairly maligned, or even that Trump is perfectly willing to carelessly toss around violent rhetoric—that’s been plain since 2015! The thing to note is how Trump’s defenders continue to weaponize the discourse around Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric to obscure the obvious, unsubtle ways in which he has embraced lawlessness and violence.

As Bill noted above, Trump hasn’t been shy about his full-throated embrace of those who did violence in his name on January 6th: He’s made springing them from prison a key campaign promise. And he has made no secret of his lust for redirecting state violence toward his political enemies: Every lawmaker who served on the House January 6th committee, he wrote yesterday on Truth Social, “should go to Jail.”

When anti-anti-Trump voices natter on about subjects like a “bloodbath hoax,” this is what they’re doing: focusing attention away from Trump’s concrete authoritarian sympathies and toward his more nebulously ominous utterances, all to create a vague sense in the minds of those not following things too closely that any connection between Trump and violent authoritarianism is just media propaganda.

And media outlets, which understandably want to defend their own integrity against these sorts of accusations, can sometimes fall into playing along with this strategy: All the Sunday shows mentioned above spent more time litigating the “bloodbath” remark than they did discussing Trump’s ongoing embrace of the January 6th criminals.

—Andrew Egger

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Catching up . . .

• Putin may be the biggest dupe of his fake election landslide: Politico

• Trump doubles down on migrants ‘poisoning’ the country: New York Times

• Trump: ‘I don’t know’ if Putin was responsible for Navalny’s death: The Hill 

• Israeli Negotiators Head to Qatar for Cease-Fire Talks, Officials Say: New York Times

• Forced TikTok sale ‘absolutely’ could happen before November, Rep. Gallagher says: Politico

• Father of murdered Georgia student fears her death is being exploited in heated immigration debate: NBC News

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Quick Hits

1. Mike Pence

The two most important Republicans to cross Trump and stand up for the Constitution on January 6 were Vice President Mike Pence and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell kissed the ring last week. But Pence says he won’t:

The president and I have profound differences. And many people think that it’s just over January 6. And frankly, the fact that the president continues to insist that I had the right to overturn the election that day is a fundamental difference. But I want to be clear that I have forgiven the president in my heart for what happened that day. As a Christian, I’m required to do that. I have prayed for him in that regard. But the issue of fealty to the Constitution is not a small matter.

But it’s not just that. The reason that I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump this year also has to do with the fact that he is walking away not just from keeping the faith with the Constitution on that day, but also with a commitment to fiscal responsibility, a commitment to the sanctity of life, a commitment to American leadership in the world . . . After a lot of reflection, I just concluded I cannot endorse the agenda that Donald Trump is carrying into this national debate.

You could nitpick some things in this posture. But Pence had gone as deep into MAGA as a traditional conservative could, then had the courage to do the right thing on January 6th—and has chosen to burn his bridges rather than go crawling back to Trump for forgiveness, as so many others have. It’s a respectable choice he’s made.

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2. Things Can Always Get Dumber

Trump’s biggest fans are getting kind of worried that the most MAGA members of the House of Representatives may not be MAGA enough. The Daily Beast reports they’re trying to do something about it:

2024 is poised to be a very different election year, one in which no House Republican is safe, no matter how MAGA they may be.

At least 21 House Republican incumbents are facing primary challenges from candidates who are seriously campaigning and raising at least some funds, according to a Daily Beast review of campaign filings and other materials . . .

Some of the incumbents are familiar primary targets, like Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Don Bacon (R-NE), considered among the most centrist members of the GOP conference. Some are being challenged simply because they aren’t loud or combative enough—or even if they cast a vote in favor of funding the government, which is now a punishable offense in the MAGA base.

But many are as conservative and Trump-supporting as [Mike] Bost, if not more so. Rep. William Timmons (R-SC), who has a 95 percent lifetime score from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is facing an aggressive primary challenge . . .

What nearly all of these incumbents have in common is that their opponents hail from the far-right fringes of the party. Where the incumbents are on Fox and Newsmax, the challengers are regulars on Bannon’s show, hoping to land endorsements from figures like Mike Lindell, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn.

One primary hopeful is a pro-gun YouTuber; another has based his campaign around having served prison time for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Far-right troll Laura Loomer, who came within 7 points of defeating Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) in 2022, is running again. Often lost in the noise from these ultra-MAGA figures is that their beloved party leader has endorsed their opponent.

Read the whole thing.

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