The Wall Street Journal Tears Trump a New One Over ‘Rotten’ January 6 Pardons: Another ‘Stain’ on His Legacy
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
The Wall Street Journal tore President Donald Trump a new one over the blanket pardon he offered to those convicted of committing crimes connected to the January 6 Capitol riot in an editorial published on Tuesday.
“Republicans are busy denouncing President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons for his family and political allies, and deservedly so. But then it’s a shame you don’t hear many, if any, ruing President Trump’s proclamation to pardon unconditionally nearly all of the people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” began the editorial. “This includes those convicted of bludgeoning, chemical spraying, and electroshocking police to try to keep Mr. Trump in power. Now he’s springing them from prison.”
“This is a rotten message form a President about political violence done on his behalf,” it continued before going on to profile a few of those to be let off the hook, including one man who plunged an “electroshock weapon” into a police officer’s neck, another who “sprayed streams of Wasp and Hornet Killer” at officers, and another who concussed a police officer by punching him with brass knuckles before holding him down so others could get their shots in.
“There are more like this, which everyone understood on Jan. 6 and shortly afterward,” concluded the Journal. “‘There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill,’ one GOP official tweeted. ‘This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.’ That was Marco Rubio, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State. He was right. What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.”
The Journal is one of a number of right-wing institutions and individuals to condemn Trump over the pardons.
The Dispatch’s Stephen Hayes called the decision “an utter disgrace” and “sad and shameful moment for our country,” and National Review published an editorial of its own in which it argued that the pardons were “no way to restore law and order.”
