The Spire

Ashwin Prabaharan ’26

Opinions Editor

After completing a historic comeback to the White House, newly sworn-in President Donald Trump acted on implementing several of his campaign’s promises on his first day in office as the nation’s 47th president. This Republican White House appears to be markedly different from that of the President’s last term, when his first days rang loud with chaos, staff departures, and ineffectiveness in terms of policy and political power. With control of both houses of Congress, a tighter circle of advisors, and the benefit of four years of previous experience managing the levers of power, the President commands his seat much more competently. In just over a week, numerous policy objectives, many considered bafflingly impossible or normatively irresponsible have become enacted into political reality. His pardoning of nearly 1,500 rioters arrested for storming Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021 may just have been his worst act yet. Merely days into office, President Trump has helped officially seal his political legacy as one etched by, among other things, a lamentable degree of contempt for the rule of law and our democratic process. 

The President and his supporters rationalized the decision by arguing that a majority of rioters were nonviolent, only committing trespassing or causing property damage that did not cause harm to others. What is unmistakably missing in this rationale, however, is that more than one-third of the 1,500 rioters arrested were charged with accusations that included “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement,” and most of the rioters who did receive lengthy prison time were from this fractional group only. Others, the vast majority of those convicted, received little jail time or probation as their sentences. The vitriolic response of the “MAGA” camp to the supposedly unconstitutional and torturous treatment of those arrested on Jan. 6 gave rise to prominent Republicans, including the President, to call them political hostages, victims of a Democratic White House and establishment hell-bent on jailing and silencing supporters of President Trump. For anyone to vindicate this position, the actions of the rioters and their prosecutors should be thoroughly scrutinized for their political motivations, if we somehow concede the rioters are political victims. Why don’t we run through just a few examples of those convicted by the Department of Justice and other federal prosecutors?

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, in its scathing rebuke of the President’s pardon, enumerated several rioters’ actions and the punishment they received. Sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison, Daniel Joseph “DJ” Rodriguez used an “electroshock weapon” on a capitol policeman wherein he plunged the device into the officer’s neck. William Lewis was given 37 months for spraying “steams of Wasp and Hornet Killer spray” at several officers forcing them to abandon their posts and seek immediate medical treatment of their eyes. Given 70 months in prison, Ronald McAbee assaulted a cop while wearing “reinforced brass knuckle gloves” and was seen holding one officer down to the ground as other rioters joined in on the assailing. Several organizations that mobilized rioters, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, led efforts to store and potentially equip supporters with firearms near Washington in “anticipation of a bloody and desperate fight” and in order “to finish” a civil war that day.

The hypocrisy is self-evident, gut-wrenching, and a deceitful expression of the President’s supposed support for law enforcement. By pardoning rioters who were found guilty of their crimes in trials and not summarily as would befit a lawless nation, the President sends a dark and frightening message to the American people: If you commit a crime on my behalf, the law cannot and will not touch you. As his party’s nominee, President Trump campaigned on a return to the fundamental values of law and order, of respect for the authority and role of law enforcement. This about-turn mere hours into his presidency signals his interest in pursuing partisan interests above his prime directives as President, including the duty to uphold and defend the Constitution’s and this nation’s laws’ supremacy. The lack of widespread condemnation from the Grand Old Party’s base only worsens this hypocrisy. The sanctity of this Republic’s democracy is something the President has an instinctual, normative, and institutional to defend and protect. Without its sentinel, it withers into the abyss, made worse only by the successive destruction of our national project.

Copy Edited by Lilly Baumfeld ’27

Featured image courtesy of The Independent