In the wake of Donald Trump’s scandalous presidential pardons for Jan. 6 criminals — including violent felons who assaulted police officers — many congressional Republicans responded to questions with an evasive, seemingly forward-looking answer.
For example, Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, his party’s new Senate majority leader, said, “We’re looking at the future, not the past.” His counterpart on the other side of Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson, similarly told reporters this week, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.”
It’s a deeply flawed approach for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that GOP lawmakers have already launched yet another Jan. 6 investigation of their own, which is largely the opposite of “looking at the future.”
Complicating matters, the president who issued the scandalous pardons doesn’t seem especially eager to move on, either. The New York Times reported:
President Trump said on Thursday that he would be “open” to the idea of meeting with some of the nearly 1,600 criminal defendants who were charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and to whom he granted a sweeping form of clemency this week. Mr. Trump’s remarks came during a televised session in the Oval Office. … During the signing session, Mr. Trump was asked if he had plans to meet with any of the Jan. 6 defendants — perhaps even at the White House.
“I’d be open to it, certainly,” the Republican replied.
Trump says he's open to meeting J6 criminals he pardoned, including some who beat cops: "What they did is they were protesting a crooked election. People understand that also. And they were treated very badly."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-23T20:58:36.239Z
He added that as far as he’s concerned, the Jan. 6 criminals were simply “protesting a crooked election.”
First, the election wasn’t “crooked.” Second, hundreds of the people Trump pardoned weren’t just “protesting,” they were violently assaulting police officers during an insurrectionist riot.
But just as important as the president’s obvious and lazy lies is the fact that the Republican, instead of moving beyond some of the most scandalous pardons in American history, continues to lean into the abuse.
About a year ago, an Associated Press report noted that Trump had positioned “the violent siege and its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House.” This coincided with a related Semafor report on the degree to which the Republican had put Jan. 6 rioters “at the heart of his campaign.”
A year later, the cornerstone of his candidacy has become the cornerstone of the early part of his presidency.
