Republicans are back to playing dumb, as Trump does the unforgivable

Fearing the wrath of Dear Leader, congressional Republicans are either refusing to comment on Donald Trump's disgusting pardons of violent Capitol insurrection convicts, or are flat-out lying about what Trump actually did to avoid having to criticize his behavior.

Hours after being sworn in to his second term, Trump gave unconditional pardons to 1,550 people who either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of crimes related to their actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

According to The New York Times:

The pardons and pending dismissals also covered more than 600 rioters were charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers at the Capitol, nearly 175 of whom were accused of doing so with deadly or dangerous weapons including baseball bats, two-by-fours, crutches, hockey sticks and broken wooden table legs.

Trump also commuted the sentences of members of right-wing militia groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and encouraging violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—leading to the release of those men from prison.

But multiple members of the House and Senate, including Republican congressional leaders, told reporters on Tuesday that they couldn’t make a judgement on the blanket pardons Trump issued because they haven't read up on them yet—the least believable lie on earth.

“I haven’t gone into the detail,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said.

“I don't know all the cases. I certainly don't want to pardon any violent actors. But there's a real miscarriage of justice here so I'm totally supportive of it,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told Fox News reporter Chad Pergram, apparently unaware that Trump pardoned violent actors.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said he wouldn't be for pardoning the violent insurrectionists, but wouldn't comment because he "didn't see" if Trump did that.

Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota knew that Trump issued pardons, but played dumb about what they entailed.

“My understanding, there was a range of actions that he took. And I guess I want to look and see what those are,” Hoeven said. 

Other lawmakers straight-up lied about the pardons, saying Trump issued them on a "case-by-case basis." 

“We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNN’s Manu Raju, adding, “I think they were case-by-case.”

Meanwhile, a number of GOP lawmakers refused to comment at all on the pardons, or tried to shift the conversation to former President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardons of his family members, who were likely to be harassed by the Trump administration.

“Republican senators are physically shrugging when reporters ask them what they think of Trump pardoning January 6 defendants,” Haley Byrd Wilt, a Capitol Hill reporter for the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS, wrote in a post on X.

Former Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now Trump's secretary of state, said he wouldn't comment.

"I'm not going to engage in domestic political debates," Rubio told NBC News.

In another interview with CBS, Rubio refused to comment again, saying “I work for Trump.”

“I assume you're asking me about the Biden pardons of his family,” Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa told Semafor’s Burgess Everett—a ridiculous whataboutism. “I’m just talking about the Biden pardons, because that is so selfish.”

Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Jim Banks of Indiana also tried to pivot to talking about Biden’s pardons.

“You've seen President Biden's preemptive pardons. Pardons of his own family. The power presidential pardons is one granted to a president and there's really no role for the Congress … it's the president's prerogative,” Cornyn said.

The pardons go against what Trump's own vice president said just a few days ago that Trump would do. 

“If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” JD Vance said in a Jan. 11 appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” 

To be sure, a few Republicans criticized Trump.

“I’m disappointed to see that and I do fear the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the few Republicans who’s actually stood up to Trump in the past, said.

"Anybody who is convicted of assault on a police officer, I can't get there, at all. I think it was a bad idea," Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said.

“Well I think I agree with the vice president,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told Semafor, referring to Vance’s belief that violent insurrectionists shouldn’t have been pardoned. “No one should excuse violence. And particularly violence against police officers.”

Of course, we don’t want to praise anyone for doing the bare minimum and speaking the truth about Trump’s awful actions.

And McConnell is largely to blame for the fact that these pardons took place at all, as he refused to convict Trump in the impeachment trial in January 2021, allowing Trump to run for president again.

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