Brownshirts don’t come from nowhere, they need cultivation. Trump is simply cultivating.
It’s worth noting that this is just speculation on a promise Trump has made, but I personally have seen Trump throw so many people under so many god damned buses that I honestly don’t think he’ll keep this promise.
This is a long article and this it the section referenced by the title, near the end:
Donald Trump has pledged to grant mass pardons to people prosecuted for their involvement in Jan. 6. What message do you think he is trying to send?
The message that he is trying to send, which is incorrect, is that people are being prosecuted or have been prosecuted for their political views. That’s just not the case. The only people who have been criminally charged went beyond speech and engaged in conduct which was criminal. If this rally had been a lot of angry people chanting “Stop the Steal” and waving Trump flags, but not assaulting police officers and not breaking windows and climbing through them to get into the Capitol, there’s no crime. No one is prosecuted simply for believing that the election was stolen and being at the Capitol. They had to go beyond that into conduct.
Donald Trump “was the proximate cause” of the Jan. 6 insurrection. “He’s the leader. He’s the head conspirator who put in motion a series of legal steps that ultimately culminated in storming the Capitol.”
There’s a range of culpability. Some simply stepped over that broken glass and those bloody stairs and went in, and they were charged with trespassing or disorderly conduct. Those are misdemeanors, they’re the least culpable. Some were convicted of seditious conspiracy, advocating the use of force to disrupt the lawful function of government. That’s the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, that’s the most serious. There are some in between, who were at the Capitol and who did commit acts of violence. I’m not sure if the president will draw any sort of distinction between them. Will he equate the misdemeanor trespassers with the seditious conspirators and give them all a blanket pardon? I hope not. I hope there’s some recognition that a pardon to some of the people on that most culpable end of the spectrum would send a horrible message to law enforcement and everybody else. We’re going to have to wait and see, after Jan. 20, what comes out.
He could have pardoned them before he left office. Hell, he could have pardoned them before they actually did anything.
I wouldn’t be surprised by anything from absolutely no pardoned all the way through blanket pardoned for FUTURE violence on lawmakers. AFAIK, in DC everything is federal jurisdiction and therefore everything is pardonable.
Future pardons don’t exist, at least so far. That would require even more irrational contortions by the craven, corrupt Supreme Court, but I suppose it’s foolish to rule that out, based on their past lawlessness.
Brownshirts don’t come from nowhere, they need cultivation. Trump is simply cultivating.
It’s worth noting that this is just speculation on a promise Trump has made, but I personally have seen Trump throw so many people under so many god damned buses that I honestly don’t think he’ll keep this promise.
This is a long article and this it the section referenced by the title, near the end:
The real message he’s trying to send is that members of his lumpen lynch mobs will be allowed to terrorize others with impunity.
And what that means to the rest of us is that the government is not going to protect us, so we’d better take measures to protect ourselves.
He could have pardoned them before he left office. Hell, he could have pardoned them before they actually did anything.
I wouldn’t be surprised by anything from absolutely no pardoned all the way through blanket pardoned for FUTURE violence on lawmakers. AFAIK, in DC everything is federal jurisdiction and therefore everything is pardonable.
Future pardons don’t exist, at least so far. That would require even more irrational contortions by the craven, corrupt Supreme Court, but I suppose it’s foolish to rule that out, based on their past lawlessness.