Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who’s supported this site this year. It’s a validation of the work we put into it and I appreciate it so much. It appears that indy media, however small, is going to be more important than ever in these next few years. Thanks to you, we’ll be here doing our best to make sense of it all.
I don’t honestly know what most people care about anymore but I do know that some of us still find Trump’s attempted coup one of the most shocking events we’ve ever witnessed. A president inciting a mob to storm the Capitol during a joint session of Congress to overturn the presidential election is the most destabilizing event in recent memory. That we’ve put that president back in the White House is a very disturbing sign that this country has lost its moorings.
Trump discussed his plans to pardon the insurrectionists in his recent TIME Magazine interview:
Well, we’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office. And a vast majority of them should not be in jail. A vast majority should not be in jail, and they’ve suffered gravely. And I say, why is it that in Portland and in many other places, Minneapolis, why is it that nothing happened with them and they actually caused death and destruction at levels not seen before? So you know, if you take a look at what happened in Seattle, you had people die, you had a lot of death, and nothing happened, and these people have been treated really, really badly. Yeah, it’s an important issue for me. They’ve suffered greatly, and in many cases they should not have suffered.
Trump doesn’t care about much and he certainly doesn’t feel as if he has to reward anyone. But these people were loyal to him and they did what he wanted them to do. To the extent he is capable of caring about anyone beyond himself, I think he cares about them. It’s almost certain that he’s going to do it.
Dan Pfeiffer took a look at the political ramifications of this decision should he do it. He says it would be a case of historic malpractice:
Despite Donald Trump’s election, people are not okay with what happened on January 6th. A Data for Progress poll from January 2024 found that nearly three-quarters of voters believe that those involved in storming the Capitol did the wrong thing. More than 60% believe what happened on that day was a “violent insurrection,” and only 16% believe it was a “peaceful protest.” Accounting for the whole poll, it’s clear that only about a third of Republicans believed Trump’s arguments about the assault on the Capitol.
An Ipsos poll from earlier this month found that 61% of Americans disapprove of Trump pardoning people who were convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. More than six in ten Republicans support the pardons, which is alarmingly high and doesn’t bode well for our two-party system. However, now should be the apex of Donald Trump’s political power. He just won 94% of Republican voters, yet only 61% of Republicans approve of the pardons.
He points out that no polling anywhere thinks this should be a priority. And he believes this presents an opportunity for Democrats:
According to the exit polls, Trump won 9% of voters with an unfavorable opinion of him. None of these voters will be surprised when Trump says offensive things, stomps on previously sacred norms, or lies. The less politically engaged Trump voters aren’t fully aware of the breadth of the Trump agenda, including the details of Project 2025, but they knew the bet they were making. They were willing to take a chance on Trump if he addressed prices and the border (with prices being a much greater part of the equation).
If Trump’s first act is to pardon convicted criminals, some of whom violently attacked police officers, that is a violation of the deal he made with voters. We need to juxtapose everything he does with a failure to address prices. Every moment pardoning a rioter or seeking retribution against his political enemies is a moment not spent lowering the cost of gas and groceries. As Trump admitted in his Time Magazine interview, prices are unlikely to come down; and when prices stay high, it’s because Trump and the Republicans are focused on helping themselves and their political allies rather than helping American families.
I could not agree with him more. Whether it will make a difference I don’t know but as I wrote earlier, that comment in the same TIME interview about lowering costs being “hard” after his repeated promises to do so should be hung around his neck every time he does anything else. If Democrats can do nothing else (and it increasingly appears that they can’t) they can do this much. Hammer the price of eggs over and over and over again the minute he gets into office and remind everyone that he said the price of everything, housing, rents, cars, eggs etc., was going to go down. It’s literally the easiest political rhetoric on the planet.
I know I’m going to keep doing it and if regular people do this on social media maybe some of the Democrats and serious pundits will do it too. One of Donald Trump’s true insights about modern politics was that repetition is necessary to push any ideas through the information vortex.
I hope you enjoy the fact that Tom Sullivan and I spend a ridiculous amount of time picking through all the great analysis and information out there and try to synthesize it into accessible and (hopefully) entertaining ways. If you do, I’d be grateful if you could put a little something in the Hullabaloo stocking this season.
Hang in there everybody. We’ll get through this if we stick together.
Cheers,
digby
And Happy Hollandaise everyone!