The J6ers may not be serving out their sentences but the yous and mes are doing time for the next four years. Our crime? Just living in America along with the lunatic fringe that showed up to vote and allowed this lunatic in office now to return to power with 49.5% of the electorate. America is split right down the middle, like Solomon commanded happen to the baby of myth. Unlike the baby, though, who couldn’t live if chopped in two and one half given to each of the women who claimed to be its mother, we are able to live in a fractured country.
Today is only Day Two of this madness and abuse of the pardon power is foremost on Trump’s agenda. He pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the dark web Silk Road marketplace. Trump knows nothing of Ulbricht, not even how to spell his name properly (as evidenced by the tweet bragging about this action. He corrected it later.) But it tweaks the libs and flips the bird to the rule of law, so it’s a Trumpian thing, right?
This is the guy who started the Silk Road dark website which was used the facilitate major global drug trafficking. Was serving life in prison. But when Trump wanted the Libertarian Party endorsement he promised them this. He never heard of Ulbricht. Even spelled his name wrong. pic.twitter.com/DVYzKqxZbT
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 22, 2025
That was the warm up. Then he got down to business.
“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER… I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!” Jacob Chansley, dubbed the QAnon shaman as a reflection of his horned-animal headdress and body paint at the January 6, 2021, riot inside the U.S. Capitol, posted on X shortly after President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of or pardoned all those convicted of crimes related to the events of that day.
“NOW I AM GONNA BY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!” he continued. “J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME… EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!”
A Scripps News/Ipsos poll conducted in late November, after Trump had won the 2024 presidential election, found that only 30% of Americans supported pardoning the January 6th protesters. In early January, many Republican lawmakers suggested they would not support pardons for those who committed violence against police officers, and on January 12, 2025, then vice president–elect J.D. Vance told Fox News Sunday that “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
This puts Republican leaders, who claim to defend law and order, on the back foot. When CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, asked Republican senators what they thought of the blanket pardons, even MAGA senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said it was unacceptable to pardon people who assaulted police officers but claimed he “didn’t see it,” although the footage of the violence is widely available. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) both criticized the pardons.
Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) tried to blame Trump’s pardons on former president Joe Biden, saying he had opened the door to broad pardons, although Biden preemptively pardoned people who had not been convicted of crimes but were in Trump’s crosshairs: people like former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, whom Trump appointed but later accused of “treason” for being unwilling to execute an illegal order. In one of his first moves as president yesterday, Trump had the official portrait of Milley removed from the hall in the Pentagon where portraits of all previous chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are displayed—all, now, except Milley.
The D.C. Police Union expressed its “dismay over the recent pardons,” reiterating its stance that “anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, without exception.”
And the D.C. Police Union is spot on. But we have in office a man who shows open contempt for the rule of law, calling prosecutors, attorneys general and judges “scum” and “lunatics.” I personally did not think that Trump could regain office after January 6. I am amazed that he did. And the only thing that I can say about that? We live in a day and age where we see violence on television all the time. It’s part of our “entertainment.” The fact that these were real people who became dead or disabled and not TV actors evidently did not sink into peoples’ heads.
Which means that we are a stupid, dumbed down culture. And it gets worse. It always does with Trump. Get used to it — not that you aren’t already sick and tired of it, but Trump: The Sequel is going to be a positively dreadful movie, if the first ten minutes (two days) of it are any indication.
In that Scripps poll, only 23% of Americans supported restricting women from military combat. But today, Trump fired the first uniformed woman to lead a branch of the armed forces, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Lee Fagan. A senior official for the newly-staffed Department of Homeland Security said she was fired for an “excessive” focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Demonstrating his determination to advance a particular kind of Americanism, Trump announced he would rename the Gulf of Mexico, calling it the Gulf of America, and that he would change the name of Denali in Alaska, the tallest peak in North America, back to the name it held between 1917 and 2015: Mt. McKinley, in honor of the nation’s twenty-fifth president, who was famous primarily because he was assassinated in 1901.
Even Lisa Murkowski opposes the change. “Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial,” she said.
All that falls on deaf ears (Trump still has two, right? Or didn’t one of them get blown off, which is what he claims and the press is too gutless to contradict?) especially coming from the lips of somebody like Murkowski, who is not his staunchest supporter.
These are dark days ahead. We have one realistic move and one only: Take back both chambers of Congress in 2026. We have to wake, sleep, live and breathe for that moment.
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The next time one of those thugs assaults a police officer, they should just drop them where they stand. Can’t pardon what ain’t alive anymore.
I wished at the time that all the Capitol police had been armed and shooting. There should have been more than Ashley Babbett who after FA, FO. You know damned well that if it had been a mob of black men attacking the Capitol and the police, that’s exactly what would have happened. This mob of white stooges should have found out the hard way too.
Here’s why shooting (and Officers were armed and could have done so) would have been a bad idea. Even warning shots into the air could have kicked off a slaughter. They knew the kind of crowd they were dealing with and there would be scores of rioters, if not hundreds with firearms concealed during the whole thing. Had arrests been made instead of allowing everyone to just walk away I’ll guarantee you guns would have been discovered on the rioters. So, as I said even warning shots would likely have led to some shooting at LE and the whole thing would have quickly escalated into a bloodbath. In the case of Ashley Babbit the tactical situation was such that meeting an imminent threat with deadly force was in a space where LE could drive back rioters with gunfire. Just the one rioter getting shot shocked the rioters enough to stablize things for the moment.
The fact there were so few deaths from that riot is a miracle made possible due to the restraint of the Capitol Police and others who defended the Capitol that day.
It’s open season on any tRump opposition .
Yes, to both, above comments!
Please correct or inform me if I’m incorrect, but isn’t he still a convicted felon? Whether he received a pardon or commutation? As far as I know, felons are not allowed to own guns.
Wait for it….. the wails of dismay from all the J6 convicts who find out their pardons do NOT erase their convictions.
I asked Google, “Does a pardon erase a conviction?” The answer: “No, a pardon does not erase a criminal conviction from your record; it only releases you from the punishment associated with the crime, meaning the conviction will still appear on your criminal history even if you are pardoned.”
AFAIK, the act of accepting a pardon is acknowledgement by the individual that he/she is in fact guilty of the crime – not the remedy these “patriots” are looking forward to.
😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛