The right place to make the best case against Trump
Donald Trump considers Jan. 6 a day of love. What might a day of hate
look like?
By the Editorial Board
October 28, 2024 at 5:30 p.m. EDT
Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver her closing argument in a speech Tuesday at the Ellipse in D.C. This location, where President Donald Trump incited a mob to ransack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is fitting and proper. Mr. Trump’s unprecedented efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, combined with promises to pardon supporters convicted of crimes committed that day, represent Ms. Harris’s strongest argument for why voters shouldn’t return him to the White House.
Mr. Trump has shown no contrition for what happened during
the worst assault on the Capitol since the British set it ablaze in 1814.
Instead, he’s attempted to rewrite history.
During a Univision town hall on Oct. 16, Republican Ramiro González, a 56-year-old construction worker living in Tampa, expressed concern to Mr. Trump about his inaction on Jan. 6. Mr. Trump said, not for the first time, that it was actually “a day of love” and referred to the rioters in the first person plural. “The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” he said. By “others,” Mr. Trump is referring to law enforcement officers, some 140 of whom were assaulted by his supporters that day. Moreover, it’s not true “we” didn’t have guns.
Six people were arrested on Jan. 6 while possessing guns in the vicinity of the Capitol, and more than a dozen have been charged with bringing weapons into D.C. Police officers testified that they observed more people with weapons but didn’t try to arrest them because they were regaining control of the Capitol.
Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a star witness during the Jan. 6 congressional inquest, testified under oath that the president was angry that Secret Service agents weren’t letting armed supporters through security at the Ellipse. “I don’t even care that they have weapons,” Ms. Hutchinson recalled Mr. Trump saying. “They’re not here to hurt me.” (Mr. Trump denies this.)
This month alone, Mr. Trump played footsie with a conspiracy theory that the insurrection was some kind of FBI inside job, sharing a meme on social media that said: “January 6 will go down in history as the day the government staged a riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election.” As he reiterated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Mr. Trump told podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday that “the enemy from within” poses a greater threat than North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
During an interview with radio host Dan Bongino, he compared the incarceration of his supporters for Jan. 6 crimes to the internment of 112,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, even though Japanese Americans were interned entirely because of their ethnicity and without due process.
When pressed, Mr. Trump added that he told attendees at his “Stop the Steal” rally to protest “peacefully and patriotically.” But he also urged them to “walk down” to the Capitol. “And I’ll be there with you,” he said. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he continued. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing.”
More than 1,500 people have been criminally charged by federal prosecutors in connection with breaching the Capitol that day. Of those, about 1,200 have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial. About 600 were charged with assaulting police or rioting. Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman has said he’ll consider pardon requests on “a case-by-case basis.” Mr. Trump himself has declined to rule out clemency for members of extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Over the past four years, Mr. Trump has sounded an increasingly sympathetic tone for all of them. He evolved from referring to the Jan. 6 defendants as “political prisoners” to calling them “hostages.” He has said the real “insurrection” took place on Election Day. He contributed his voice to a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by the “J6 Prison Choir,” which he played at the kickoff rally of his 2024 campaign.
Mr. Trump himself faces criminal charges for trying to subvert the election. In an Oct. 2 filing, special counsel Jack Smith laid out forensic evidence to prove that Mr. Trump watched Fox News and scrolled through Twitter as he sat alone in the Oval Office on Jan. 6. When he was told that Vice President Mike Pence had been evacuated to a secure location after insurrectionists chanted for his hanging, Mr. Trump allegedly responded, “So what?”
Mr. Pence does not support Mr. Trump’s bid for another term. Should he win, Mr. Trump pledged last week to fire Mr. Smith “within two seconds” of taking office. In addition to retribution, the GOP nominee has promised not to be a dictator, “except for Day One.”
If Jan. 6, 2021, was a day of love, it’s unsettling to
imagine what that “Day One” of a second Trump term might look like, as well as
the days after it.