President Donald Trump’s sweeping Monday pardon and commutation of January 6 prisoners and defendants is the sort of action that should have set off tidal waves of protest, howls of execration, and pleas that “this is not normal.”
Only it didn’t. While the usual suspects scrawled their objections, larger Washington merely shrugged.
Brian Stelter, who was hired back at CNN last fall after two years of exile in his apartment, leaned predictably hard and heavy on the outrage. He
fretted about Fox News’ coverage of Jake Paul and Mike Tyson horsing around at a gala and other outlets covering the president’s policy promises, comparing this negatively to his own courageous coverage.
There’s more than one reason for the more muted reactions of our generally apocalyptic press.
“While newsrooms,” he whined, “are focusing on the rule of law, MAGA opinion outlets are focusing on Trump’s rule.”
“They assaulted cops and tried to overturn an election,” another CNN story
read. “What to know about Trump’s mass pardons for January 6 rioters.”
Besides the true believers, however, there were largely shrugs. The Washington Post dedicated its homepage to anti-Trump planning and warnings, but the pardons barely made it onto the fold.
Washington Post/Screenshot
Politico’s morning newsletter outlined the new president’s early infrastructure agenda, the policy impacts of some of his executive orders, and his relaxed demeanor. It didn’t get to the pardons until nine paragraphs down. Though it called it “the biggest story of the night,” the focus was on whether Republicans might get squirmy over it all. In short: politics over histrionics.
The New York Times gave the pardons similar treatment to the Post’s, placing them in the bottom right of the page.
New York Times/Screenshot
The L.A. Times on Tuesday morning understandably devoted the top two-thirds of its homepage to the wildfires’ devastation. The pardons did not make the morning homepage.
The Congress-focused Punchbowl morning newsletter only made mention of the sweeping executive action in a portion of a sentence and did not offer any musings on legislators’ reactions.
The word “unprecedented,” a near-hourly cliché in corporate media’s coverage of Trump’s first term in office, didn’t appear even once in the above analyses. A golden age for America, indeed!
There’s more than one reason for the more muted reactions of our generally apocalyptic press. First, while the breadth and depth of the pardons happily surprised many of Trump’s supporters, they were long expected. He promised he would do this over and over again, and he did it.
Second is the reality of Trump’s new legitimacy. Over eight years of nearly every one of his warnings coming true, his public persecution, and the incredible assassination attempt, Trump has far more political capital than any person in the country right now.
Politico co-founder John Harris said it well in
an op-ed about Trump’s place in history. Democrats, he wrote, have learned the hard way that they “cannot push Trump to the margins, by treating him as a momentary anomaly or simply denouncing him as lawless and illegitimate.” The truly jaw-dropping piece was titled “Time to Admit It: Trump Is a Great President. He’s Still Trying to Be a Good One.”
Third, outgoing President Joe Biden’s pardons. They were egregious and self-centered, and he and his allies had promised time and time again that he would not do it. They muddied the waters, made any kind of clean hit on Trump laughable, and deeply stained his legacy.
Finally, the American people are sick of J6. Truly sick of it. It’s been beaten to death, and we know it. Imagined tales of heroism couldn’t even win former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn a 2024 Democratic primary a short drive outside D.C. in deep-blue Maryland. We know there were examples of awful violence that day, but we’re also aware that the Department of Justice launched one of the largest investigations in modern history — and we can figure there were more than a few miscarriages of justice. Even those who might have earned their time have already served years in prison.
“Whatever the Oath Keepers may or may not be individually guilty of,” Blaze News investigative reporter and former J6 defendant Steve Baker told the Beltway Brief, “the one thing they are not guilty of are the crimes for which they were convicted.” He’s far from alone in recognizing this.
That dim awareness, by the way, will only grow as those freed from their prison cells tell their stories.
“I’m leading with this [J6] today,” Stelter wrote Tuesday morning, “because we have to burst these media bubbles in order to understand what Americans of various political persuasions are feeling and thinking right now.”
Interesting thought. The funny thing is that the bubble is his own. And it’s shrinking by the hour.
Politico: Time to Admit It: Trump Is a Great President. He’s Still Trying to Be a Good One.
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Opinion & analysis, Politics