If You Think Trump’s J6 Pardons Are About The ‘Insurrection,’ You’re Missing The Point
As is often the case, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is straying from its lane to admonish Republicans and Trump supporters in a way that demonstrates the paper’s impressive capacity for shallowness.
The Journal on Tuesday joined the New York Times and the Washington Post in running editorials attacking President Trump for his sweeping pardons of Jan. 6 defendants and convicts. The paper called the pardons “a rotten message from a President about political violence done on his behalf” and decried them as a “stain” on his legacy. That’s more or less exactly what the Times and the Post said, but it’s useful to see that even an influential publication tangentially aligned with the political right can be so lacking in originality and acuity.
True, the pardons are specific to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, which included violent rioting, trespassing, and obstruction of official government business. But just as that day didn’t happen in a vacuum, the pardons aren’t exclusively related to the conduct of the people receiving them.
Any discussion about Jan. 6, 2021, has to start with Nov. 8, 2016. Trump was elected, and the following four years were absolute hell for the people who supported him. The “Resistance” — including the national news media, the intelligence community, and the federal bureaucracy — worked day in and day out to thwart the agenda Trump was elected to enact. They manufactured fake scandals (Russiagate), gaslit the public (the white supremacy hoax), and lied about virtually everything.
Then we entered 2020, the year Americans were told they couldn’t work, couldn’t visit loved ones, and couldn’t host funerals for the departed. No church, no school, no weddings, no birthdays. No proms or graduation ceremonies. This was for a virus that passed through close to 100 percent of the infected causing only mild illness. Mandate violators were accused of spreading death — but only if they were Republicans.
Memorial Day of that year really got the party going with the death of George Floyd, a delinquent drug addict who had an unhealthy heart. But because he happened to be a black man under arrest by a white police officer at the time he died, and the election was getting closer, Democrats and the media turned the unfortunate episode into months of violent race rioting and yet more harassment and defamation of white people — but only if they were Republicans. Property was destroyed and people were killed. Democrats and the media pinned the blame on a 17-year-old who was attempting to flee a bloodthirsty mob. Democrats tried putting him in prison for it.
Beaten, bruised, and crumbling as a nation, we ultimately made it to Election Day. Early results indicated a Trump sweep, but then the lights went out. When the sun rose, Joe Biden was winning. It wouldn’t be until another three days later that every major news organization had called the race.
That’s when the media like to begin their historical records of Jan. 6, because it allows them to bypass all of the abuse and horror inflicted on the country — Trump supporters in particular — the preceding four years. Yeah, the president and his supporters were angry, so much so that they finally engaged in a little fiery but mostly peaceful rioting of their own.
And for that conduct, hundreds of them have spent tens of thousands of dollars, lost their livelihoods, and sat in jail for months. A pardon gets them none of that back. It only ends what they — and by political affiliation, us — have been put through for almost a decade.
We’ve earned it.
Jesus Christ is King
