It has been barely over a week, and already it feels as if the Democrats are inexplicably letting pass the necessity of crucifying President Trump for his pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists. As I wrote a few days ago, the president’s release and forgiveness of those who tried to derail an election, hunted down politicians, and beat police officers is an almost uniquely disqualifying event, second only to the insurrection itself. Trump signaled to his supporters, particularly the most bloody-minded, that it’s completely legitimate to use violence to seize power. Forgiving those who tried to overthrow the government is the same as endorsing their cause, which Trump has unsurprisingly done, as insurrection was his cause as well. The pardons are the acts of a would-be dictator, not of someone who just took an oath to protect the Constitution.
A decent number of Republican officials seem to feel that the pardons are a subject best left behind. The sense of political vulnerability practically radiates from some, like the shimmer of heat off a goose being cooked; for instance, “Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) indicated she was unfamiliar with the pardons but would disagree with them if they were for violent offenders” — a laughable statement given that it’s simply not credible that she was unaware of the pardons, and something that deserves to haunt her when the Democrats try to unseat her in 2026.
Yet many others have outright endorsed the pardons, with party leadership moving in an aggressive and sinister direction. Last Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the creation of a “new select subcommittee to investigate events before and after Jan. 6, 2021,” according to NBC News. The committee’s focus has been presented in vague terms, with Johnson talking about going after “false narratives” around January 6, but it is highly likely the committee will seek to further spread disinformation about the insurrection. Equally likely, and even more troubling, the committee may target those on the original January 6 committee and others who have worked to uncover the facts about that day. In other words, the House GOP is set not only to whitewash insurrection, but to further that insurrection’s ends by defaming those who attempted to defend America by investigating it, and even seeking their prosecution by the Justice Department.
As if this were not far enough down the rabbit hole for one week, some of those who received pardons and commutations from President Trump have voiced a desire for vengeance against those who brought them to justice. Sickeningly, Enrique Tarrio, former head of the Proud Boys, told reporters that, ““Now it’s our turn. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars and they need to be prosecuted.”” And Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers right-wing militia and whose sentence Trump commuted, said that, “What has to happen first is that the prosecutors who suborned perjury — that’s a crime — need to be prosecuted for their crimes.” Other January 6 insurrectionists are looking at suing the federal government for civil rights violations.
I want to be clear here: the idea that those who tried to overturn an election through violence are now howling for retribution against those who defended the Capitol, investigated their crimes, and brought them to justice is alternately laughable, enraging, and unsettling. Trump’s pardons have clearly licensed them to feel as if they are not only above the law, but also that they may now resume their insurrectionary efforts through attempts to pervert the justice system by turning those who oppose insurrection into the actual criminals. This is sick, perverse stuff, deserving of our contempt.
Yet these criminals obviously feel empowered to talk and act like this because the president of the United States has abused the power of the pardon to clear them of their crimes, and has in this way officially blessed their insurrectionary actions. And these expressed desires for retribution should not be seen as separate from either the House committee’s intent to invert ideas of criminality around January 6, or Trump’s ongoing efforts to redefine that day.
Indeed, Trump’s own recent remarks and executive orders constitute yet another thrust by MAGA forces to revive and repurpose the dark spirit of January 6. Not only has Trump expressed openness to meeting with pardoned insurrectionists, he has also indicated “he will consider turning his commutations into full pardons for the violent extremists convicted of seditious conspiracy,” according to the Washington Post. Moreover, he has already signed an executive order that “directed agencies, including the Justice Department, to review decisions by the Biden administration for political influence and recommend responses.” And when he was asked at a press conference last week “whether far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers would now have a place in the political conversation given his expansive efforts to pardon their members or commute their sentences,” he responded by saying, “Well, we have to see. They’ve been given a pardon. I thought their sentences were ridiculous and excessive.” And last weekend, Rhodes was present at a Trump Rally in Las Vegas; I think we can well expect more such appearances by other pardonees in the coming weeks and months.
Taken together, this rhetoric and these actions form the latest chapter in Trump and MAGA’s concerted efforts to dissemble about the events around January 6. But they don’t simply indicate a battle to define the history and truth of January 6 — they also represent an effort to actually continue the insurrection that only seemed to culminate on that day. The goal of punishing those who defend America is in fact an insurrectionary goal, no different than what Trump and the attackers attempted to accomplish four years ago, an attempt to overthrow the rule of law and replace it with the will of a lawless faction.
Democrats and other defenders of American democracy need to come to grips with this reality: that they cannot simply try to “turn the page” on January 6 as a distraction or a losing issue. Four years on, Trump, joined again by some of the insurrectionists and broadly backed by the GOP, is doubling down on a path of lawlessness by targeting their political opponents as America’s true enemies. This inversion of right and wrong, of truth and fiction, is a battering ram they are using to help take down our democracy and wreck our freedoms.
The worst thing in the world would be for the Democrats to try to ignore these threats: the GOP investigations, the insurrectionists baying for retribution, and the president’s continued attempts to glorify his coup attempt and achieve some of its previously foiled goals. With MAGA’s shift into turning the tables on their political opponents and behaving as if they are the actual criminals, Democrats have every incentive to resist an effort that, if successful, might actually see some of their ranks imprisoned on false charges, and competitive elections gutted. They cannot be crippled by a failure of imagination as to how far Trump might go; the pardons, too, were unthinkable four years ago, and yet they happened, striking a dangerous blow that will become all the more damaging if not vigorously opposed and countered by those who value democracy.
There is no way forward but to confront the president and his minions on their continued aim to crush American democracy in favor of an untrammeled Trump. If the GOP intends to spend the next two or four years arguing why it’s good that a gang of white nationalists attacked cops and sacked the Capitol, with the end goal of criminalizing the Democrats, then the Democrats need to turn this crisis to their advantage, and double down on identifying Trump as a violent-minded would-be dictator who coddles criminals, and his party as gutless lackeys who can’t stand up to this disgrace of a president.