Ed note: Somehow the Trump cartoons don’t seem funny to me anymore. They reflect the negativity that is now reality and evoke sadness rather than humor. Historian Heather Cox Richardson helps me see the present in an historical context. As you can read below, our history is blemished–only to be resurfaced now unfortuanately.
by Heather Cox Richardson
“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER… I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!” Jacob Chansley, dubbed the QAnon shaman as a reflection of his horned-animal headdress and body paint at the January 6, 2021, riot inside the U.S. Capitol, posted on X shortly after President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of or pardoned all those convicted of crimes related to the events of that day.
“NOW I AM GONNA BY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!” he continued. “J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME… EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!”
A Scripps News/Ipsos poll conducted in late November, after Trump had won the 2024 presidential election, found that only 30% of Americans supported pardoning the January 6th protesters. In early January, many Republican lawmakers suggested they would not support pardons for those who committed violence against police officers, and on January 12, 2025, then vice president–elect J.D. Vance told Fox News Sunday that “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
This puts Republican leaders, who claim to defend law and order, on the back foot. When CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, asked Republican senators what they thought of the blanket pardons, even MAGA senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said it was unacceptable to pardon people who assaulted police officers but claimed he “didn’t see it,” although the footage of the violence is widely available. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) both criticized the pardons.
Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) tried to blame Trump’s pardons on former president Joe Biden, saying he had opened the door to broad pardons, although Biden preemptively pardoned people who had not been convicted of crimes but were in Trump’s crosshairs: people like former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, whom Trump appointed but later accused of “treason” for being unwilling to execute an illegal order. In one of his first moves as president yesterday, Trump had the official portrait of Milley removed from the hall in the Pentagon where portraits of all previous chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are displayed—all, now, except Milley.
The D.C. Police Union expressed its “dismay over the recent pardons,” reiterating its stance that “anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, without exception.” (Continued)