WATCH: Trump threatens to pardon Jan 6th insurrectionists if elected in 2024
Donald Trump hasn’t even officially declared himself a candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2024v presidential race, but he’s already promising to pardon those of his supporters who violently invaded the Capitol in last year’s January 6th insurrection.
That vow was among a host of other outrageous statements that the former president made during his latest ego-stoking pep rally in Conroe, Texas last night.
In his post-White House rallies, Trump has developed a fairly standardized schtick replete with a litany of familiar grievances and hackneyed attacks on his designated enemies, and last night’s event did not disappoint either his gullible supporters or those who watch his antics for the pure entertainment value of witnessing a particularly gruesome trainwreck.
Here’s a sampling of some of the lowlights of Trump’s speech at his Texas rally.
Obviously feeling the heat of the multiple state and federal investigations circling his allegedly criminal behavior, Trump vowed to retaliate with Benghazi-style witchhunts of the Biden administration once the GOP retakes control of Congress — a potent reminder of the importance of not allowing that to ever happen again.
"It's time for the American people to declare independence from every last Covid mandate … we're moving on from Covid … remember, there are far more of us than there are of them" — Trump pic.twitter.com/sUFWwQnZWt
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2022
Having presided over a disastrous response to the COVID pandemic in its initial phases, Trump is the last person anyone should turn to for advice on how to manage public health, but his delusional take on the relative number of his supporters versus those who have retained their sanity in this national crisis displays his total immersion in the bubble of his own propaganda, as does his self-assessment of his term in office.
Trump on deploying federal law enforcement to American cities during his term: "We would've gone all the way, but we wanted to let them see if they could handle it first. But it turned out they can't." pic.twitter.com/k0UUmSHGSz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2022
With his oft-declared support and excuses for the violent insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol, Trump’s hypocritical law and order message seemingly only applies to social justice protestors who think that Black lives matter.
For all his “thin blue-line” rhetoric praising police, Trump had quite a different message for another branch of the justice system, prosecutors.
Trump says to the state attorneys general in the audience "maybe you guys can get involved a little bit" as the crowd chants, "Lock her up!" pic.twitter.com/xDVO47e6XG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2022
After the crowd nostalgically chanted about locking up Hillary Clinton — a woman who has survived every unwarranted GOP investigation into her activities without a shred of evidence of illegal activity and has little political profile in 2022 — Trump moved on to setting up the next big insurrection, one tied directly to his own potential prosecution.
Trump tells a story about a New York Times reporter telling him he believes there was election fraud that is almost certainly not true pic.twitter.com/KMchXwA32W
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2022
Trump’s most egregious statement of the evening was his repudiation of the legitimacy of the American justice system, as displayed by his vow to pardon January 6th insurrectionists — whom he claims have been treated “unfairly”— if he were to be re-elected in 2024.
Trump says if he’s re-elected, he may pardon people prosecuted for their actions on January 6th pic.twitter.com/VLlkGyUr32
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2022
While it may be tempting to dismiss Trump’s lunatic ravings as the pathetic mewlings of a fading incipient autocrat, unless Trump is prosecuted and punished for his role in attempting to illegally overturn the validated outcome of the 2020 election, America’s democracy is in grave peril.
If that warning is interpreted as the progressive equivalent of the “lock her up” chants bleated by Trump’s followers, so be it.
In Donald Trump’s case, the chants are truly deserved.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Aaron Rupar at Substack and by Acyn on Twitter.
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