President-elect Donald Trump's plan to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters might enrage Trump's political opponents — as well as Trump's own supporters, who were led to believe he would go further than what he appears to be planning, a conservative analyst told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.
In his TIME Magazine interview this week, Trump suggested he would pardon most of the people who stormed the Capitol — but said he would review each case individually, leaving open the possibility that only nonviolent offenders will see pardons. That would exclude most people who were jailed for long periods of time.
"So in his interview with TIME Magazine, President-elect Trump said one of his first acts in office will be to pardon January 6th criminals, saying, quote, 'I'll be looking at J6 early on, maybe the first nine minutes,' meaning the first nine minutes of his administration," said Tapper. "He also said, quote, 'I'm going to do case by case and if they were nonviolent, I think they've been greatly punished. I'm going to look, if there's some that really were out of control.'"
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Tapper turned to analyst Jonah Goldberg. "Trump's reaffirming what he said he would do during the campaign, and the American people elected him. But what's your reaction that this is, you know, a priority in the first nine minutes of his presidency?"
"Look, I mean, these guys were the Trump Tabernacle Choir at his rallies, right? The January 6th guys," said Goldberg. "But there are a lot of caveats to this, right? He is — there are a lot of people who think everybody's going to get a pardon. And he's saying if they were nonviolent, if they were excessive, they would go case by case."
"I think it has the potential of pissing off a lot of people who think no one should get a pardon, and pissing off a lot of people who think everyone should get a pardon," Goldberg added. "So it's more fraught for him than I think people are appreciating."
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