NEW YORK – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump compared the current wave of encampments and civil disobedience on college campuses to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
He suggested Tuesday to reporters that students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza should face punishments similar to those meted out to his supporters who were prosecuted in the Jan. 6 attack. And in a separate interview, he expanded a pledge to pardon Jan. 6 defendants by saying he would consider clemency for all of them.
Trump addressed the campus protests while speaking to reporters in the hall outside the courtroom here where he is standing trial on charges of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme before the 2016 election. He and other Republicans have seized on the campus unrest to exploit fissures within the Democratic coalition over Israel’s war in Gaza and portray President Biden as losing control of the situation.
On campuses across the country, students and other demonstrators have set up tent encampments, barricaded themselves in buildings and defied police orders, leading to arrests and some police use of tear gas. No deaths have been reported.
By contrast, many Trump supporters on Jan. 6 violently assaulted police officers and ransacked the Capitol, leading to five deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Trump, though, drew a blanket equivalency, arguing that college protesters should face consequences akin to the more than 1,000 prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters. He added that he doubted that would happen, expanding on his allegations of unfairness in the legal system, which are core to his defense in this trial and the three other criminal cases against him.
“I wonder if what’s going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly,” Trump said, exaggerating the toll of the campus protests and using a shorthand term for Jan. 6 that was popularized by defendants’ lawyers and families in the MAGA movement.
“I wonder if that’s going to be the same kind of treatment they gave J6,” Trump said. “Let’s see how that all works out. I think I can give you the answer right now. And that’s why people have lost faith in our court system.”
The Biden campaign criticized Trump’s remarks.
“In his own words, he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one,’ use the military against the American people, punish those who stand against him, condone violence done on his behalf, and put his own revenge and retribution ahead of what is best for America,” said Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson James Singer. “Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the Constitution and a threat to our democracy.”
In his remarks Tuesday, Trump also repeated a false comparison between the campus protests and the 2017 march in Charlottesville by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, one of whom killed a counterprotester with his car.
“Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you’re looking at now,” Trump said. At the time, Trump defended the marchers as including “very fine people on both sides.” On Tuesday, he insisted that the remark had been taken out of context: “When you extend the statement, it’s a big hoax, what they say was said.”
Trump made the comments on the same day Time Magazine published an interview in which he expanded his repeated pledge to pardon Jan. 6 defendants by saying he would consider pardoning all of them. “Yes, absolutely,” Trump said in the interview.
Trump praised the interview to reporters on Tuesday. “They did a cover story, which is very nice,” he said. “And it’s actually at least 60 percent correct, which is about all I can ask for.”
As Trump walked away to enter the courtroom, he did not answer a reporter’s question about whether he would pardon the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, violent extremist groups whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy for helping to foment the Capitol riot. A small group of Proud Boys showed up at a Trump rally in North Carolina this month, and the campaign refused to denounce them.
In the Time interview, Trump again declined to rule out political violence in response to electoral defeat. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he said. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.”
(c) 2024, The Washington Post · Isaac Arnsdorf
Capital rioters are Republicans and thus they’re not deserving of pardons while college rioters are WOKE Democrats and are entitled to rioters, burn & damage etc.
these protests are much WORSE than Jan 6 and all these people should be locked up for good !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
don’t know if matzav is gonna post this
What was deadly about Jan 6 ?????.
Were you unaware that there were a couple of fatal strokes and one fatal heart attack.
@matzav you’re crazy that lady that died on Jan 6 was because police shot her for no reason.also seems like your defending these antisemites because no one died
Black officer Michael Byrd. This murderer was left alone, only because of the color of his skin.