Trump has publicly touted the virtues of the January 6 protesters, rioters, and defendants many times. In a 2022 appearance with Sean Hannity, Trump declared, “Believe me, there was a lot of love and a lot of friendship and people that love our country. These are great people.”
In a November 2023, speaking at a Houston rally, Trump said, “I call them the ‘J-6 hostages,’ not prisoners. I call them the hostages, what’s happened. And you know, it’s a shame.”
On March 11, Trump declared on Truth Social that one of his first acts as president would be to free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Later that month, at a rally in Waco, Texas, Trump claimed:
Under Joe Biden, American Patriots are being arrested and held in captivity like animals. Look at what’s happening in Washington. And I will tell you, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the expert. She’s been to that prison many times. There is nobody that has described what’s happening in that prison. It’s a hell hole. And these are soldiers and policemen and firemen and medics and doctors, in a couple of cases. These are people that shouldn’t have been there.
- At a Nevada rally in June, Trump said, “Those J6 warriors — they were warriors — but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened. All they were doing is protesting a rigged election. That’s what they were doing.”
Violent protesters in the name of almost any other cause get denounced by Trump in the harshest terms. But when the violent protesters are supporters of Trump, suddenly his “law and order” cries are forgotten, and Trump transforms into a bleeding heart liberal, focused on the rights of the accused. There’s no consistency, no principle, just pure situational ethics.
Someone in Trump-world really thought it would be a good idea to host a fundraiser for January 6 defenders roughly two months before Election Day, a scenario that is extremely likely to spur Trump to give another one of his unhinged, full-throated defenses of everyone arrested, indicted, and convicted that day.
You can’t save people who keep sticking the fork in the electrical socket, just to prove they can.
