Cable News Clips

Trump struggles badly to defend his scandalous Jan. 6 pardons: Donald Trump's Jan. 6 pardons are not popular, and his efforts to change Americans' minds are off to a ridiculous start

Donald Trump might think he had a mandate to pardon Jan. 6 criminals, including violent felons who assaulted police officers, because he ran on the idea and won his bid for a second term. But if the president is thinking along those lines, he’s making a serious mistake — because the evidence suggests he was elected despite his pardon vows, not because of them......

A day later, while sitting down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in the Oval Office, the president gave it another try.

“Most of the people were absolutely innocent, OK?” Trump claimed, ignoring the fact that many of the people he pardoned had pleaded guilty and that many more were found guilty by jurors who considered detailed and overwhelming evidence.

As for the violent assaults on police officers, the new president added, “They were very minor incidents, OK? You know that they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. They were very minor incidents.”

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Link to tweet

.......There were “incidents,” but they were not “very minor.” If the Republican president intends to change public attitudes, he’ll have to do far better.

As for how and why Trump decided to take such a step, NBC News reported that he settled on a maximalist approach just two days before being sworn in for a second term, to the surprise of members of his team.

NOTUS published a related report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, that said Trump saw the far-right backlash against Vice President JD Vance, who said a week earlier that violent felons “obviously” didn’t deserve presidential pardons, and it influenced his decision.

All of which helped create an avoidable and unpopular fiasco to start the president’s second term.