Comment: Trump, GOP may regret pardons of Jan. 6 rioters

By Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times

Politics often entails angles and illusion, dodges and diversions. Navigating the space between hope and reality is one of its requisite skills. But sometimes events demand a straightforward response.

To wit:

Do you think it’s OK to attack a police officer by plunging a stun gun multiple times into his neck?

How about using a riot shield to smash a police officer into a metal door frame, leaving him bruised and bloodied?

Any problem with someone who spends more than an hour assaulting law enforcement officers with pepper spray, a metal crutch and wooden and metal poles?

President Donald Trump seems just fine with the above, a tiny fraction of the crime spree committed when a swarm of rioters overran the Capitol in a violent bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The above-mentioned perpetrators — and many more like them — were among the roughly 1,500 criminal defendants whom Trump pardoned just hours after taking office.

How’s that for Making America Safe Again, as was promised throughout his White House bid?

Going forth, any candidate who campaigns under the banner of Trump’s Republican Party — which has long styled itself as the party of law and order and “backing the blue” — should be made to reconcile that asserted stance with the president’s unholy act.

And, please, none of this yeah-but-what-about in regard to President Joe Biden’s misguided use of his pardoning powers before he exited the Oval Office. None of the pardoned Biden family members were, to give but one example, caught stealing pepper spray from police, distributing it to assailants and attacking officers as part of a “war” on the government.

If you don’t see a difference, you need more help than your friendly political columnist can provide.

Trump’s fun-house version of justice may not matter a whit to voters, or alter even slightly their perceptions of the two major parties.

“If American campaigns were logical, this would be a huge problem for Republicans,” said Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College, who worked for the national GOP during the George H.W. Bush administration.

“But campaigns aren’t logical,” he said. “When Republican candidates talk about law and order, they’re talking about street crime, the things that people encounter every day. They simply put things such as the attack on the Capitol in a separate box.”

A lot of people voted for Trump’s return to the White House “knowing it was going to be messy,” as Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist and no fan of the president, put it. That recognition came baked into their decision, Stutzman said, and “they’re going to tolerate some of the nutball stuff” if the president delivers on promises such as securing America’s borders.

In fairness, it should be noted there were some post-pardon voices of Republican dissent, including GOP senators who criticized the extent of Trump’s action. Nothing, however, that amounted to a major outcry or serious Republican backlash.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters it was time to move forward and not look back, a mantra widely echoed in party ranks; except, of course, over those pardons that Biden issued.

Surveys, including one conducted right after Trump’s amnesty order, showed roughly 60 percent of those polled were opposed to pardoning Jan. 6 offenders. Which means a not-unsubstantial number of Americans have no problem turning loose cop-beaters and insurrectionists, presumably so long as Trump manages to bring down the price of eggs, bacon and gasoline.

Let’s wait and see. We’re not even two weeks into the Trump administration and there are nearly 650 days to the 2026 midterm election, the next chance voters nationwide will have to weigh in on the direction of the country and the president’s performance.

When it comes to those sprung Jan. 6 jailbirds, “we know what’s going to happen,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic campaign strategist. “Bad actors got out and they’re going to do something bad.”

In fact, just last weekend a Capitol rioter pardoned by Trump was killed by an Indiana sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop after he ended up in an altercation with an officer.

Democrats will be poised “to highlight” those sorts of cases, Carrick said, imagining the script for a campaign ad that practically writes itself: “He was sentenced to X number of years. Trump let him out of jail, and look what he did.”

The country crossed a dubious threshold on Nov. 5 when, as Pitney observed, “A convicted felon who incited a violent insurrection against the government of the United States (was) elected president.”

And here we are.

But that insult to our ideals is no reason to try to stuff the criminality of Jan. 6 down a memory hole, or “get over it,” as some Trump backers sneeringly suggest.

We can’t put those lawbreakers back behind bars. But their apologists and political patrons can be held to account when it comes time to vote again. They should be.

It’s necessary to preserve and protect our country and make America safe again.