ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Donald Trump now claims that the home terrorists he pardoned who violently attacked law enforcement officials throughout his Jan. 6, 2021, coup try have been truly the victims of that day.
“I pardoned people who were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” he stated in a half-hour information convention with the reporters touring with him on his flight to the Tremendous Bowl on Sunday.
“That’s who were assaulted and they were treated unfairly. There’s never been a group of people in this country outside of maybe one instance I can think of, but I won’t get into it, that were treated more horribly than the people of J6,” he continued. “So no, I didn’t assault. They didn’t assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity.”
Trump let out lots of of his followers who had been convicted of assaulting police on Jan. 6 as a part of his try and overturn the election he had misplaced and stay in workplace. That group was among the many practically 1,600 complete pardons for Jan. 6 circumstances Trump issued on his first day in workplace, which included about 1,000 nonviolent offenders and about 200 accused police assaulters whose circumstances have been nonetheless pending.
Greater than 140 law enforcement officials defending the Capitol from Trump’s mob have been injured that day, some gravely. One died hours later, and 4 extra died by suicide within the coming months. The mob’s habits, utilizing violence or the specter of violence to impact political change, is the definition of terrorism. And utilizing violence or the specter of violence to stay in energy, authoritarian consultants say, meets the definition of a self-coup.
Trump, however, continues to say he is a superb supporter of legislation enforcement. His White Home employees organized for him to fulfill with law enforcement officials who responded to the New 12 months’s Day terror assault in New Orleans an hour earlier than the beginning of Sunday’s recreation.
However the president had performed golf with Tiger Woods at Trump’s West Palm Seashore course Sunday morning and arrived in New Orleans a couple of half hour delayed. It’s unclear precisely how this affected the tightly orchestrated Tremendous Bowl pregame program, however Trump wound up spending lower than two minutes on the sector with the law enforcement officials and victims of the assault.
Within the information convention ― which Trump aides introduced with simply 10 minutes discover so he may boast about his renaming the Gulf of Mexico because the “Gulf of America” as Air Power 1 flew over it — Trump additionally repeated his earlier claims that Canada was “not a viable country” and must be taken over by america; that Greenland must also be taken over by america; and that the Gaza Strip can be “owned” by america and its two million residents moved elsewhere.
ROBERTO SCHMIDT by way of Getty Photographs
He once more expressed help for Elon Musk’s rampage towards federal companies on his behalf, repeating, with out proof, that the multibillionaire had discovered rampant fraud. “We have tremendous fraud, tremendous waste and tremendous abuse, and theft, by the way,” he stated.
Trump additionally repeated assaults on federal judges who’ve put a pause on Musk’s makes an attempt to unilaterally cancel congressionally mandated spending and even shut down whole companies. “No judge, frankly, should be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It’s a disgrace,” he stated.
His personal vp, J.D. Vance, has additionally said that judges shouldn’t be capable of override the manager department — a view that runs counter to greater than 220 years of established constitutional legislation. Three years in the past, Vance said that Trump, have been he to win again the White Home, ought to emulate President Andrew Jackson’s probably apocryphal defiance of the Supreme Courtroom. “When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,’” Vance stated in a podcast interview.
When requested Sunday whether or not he agreed together with his vp, Trump claimed to not perceive the query. “I don’t know even what you’re talking about,” he stated. “Neither do you.”
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Upon studying that the questioner labored for HuffPost, Trump, as he does ceaselessly, went on to insult the publication. “I thought they died,” he stated. “Are they still around? I haven’t read them in years. I thought they died.”
Trump equally attacked Time journal final week, asking in the event that they have been “still in business” in response to a brand new cowl displaying Musk sitting at Trump’s desk within the Oval Workplace. Barely a month earlier, he had stated being named Time’s individual of the yr was a “tremendous honor.”
