There was an unintentionally amusing moment during House Speaker Mike Johnson’s first post-inaugural press conference. Asked about Donald Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6 criminals, including violent felons who assaulted police officers, the Louisiana Republican told reporters, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.”
Moments later, at the same press conference, Johnson added that the House GOP majority would, however, take a fresh look at the pardons Joe Biden issued as his presidency neared its end.
It was a rather clumsy example of the House speaker’s malleable principles, but it also served as a timely reminder of a larger truth: The former Democratic president has exited the stage, but his Republican detractors aren’t quite done with him.
In fact, shortly after Johnson’s remarks on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia appeared on Real America’s Voice, a far-right media outlet, and reiterated her belief that Biden and his family “really they do belong in prison.”
As for Biden’s successor, the retired president also appears to be on Trump’s mind.
On Inauguration Day, the Republican signed a highly provocative executive order on “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” As Paul Waldman explained in his latest opinion piece for MSNBC, the order “serves as a declaration that this administration is looking to punish those Trump perceives as his enemies. … From the start, the document makes its target clear: Joe Biden and those who worked for him.”
Two days later, Trump sat down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and over the course of the interview, the new Republican president said — four times — that Biden failed to pardon himself before exiting the White House. Trump added that he saw that as a mistake on the former president’s part, saying that Biden relied on “very bad advisers.”
As the interview continued, he incumbent president added:
I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees and I won, but I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also. It is very hard to say that.
At that point, Trump quickly added, once again, that Biden didn’t pardon himself.
The president went on to say, in reference to his immediate predecessor, “If you look at it, it all had to do with him. I mean, the money went to him.”
In context, it wasn’t at all clear what “it” referred to, and despite bizarre conspiracy theories, there was no elicit “money” going to Biden.
But reality notwithstanding, the emerging picture is tough to miss: The new president and his allies aren’t quite ready to move on from the former president, at least not yet.
