Trump is using executive orders and pardons to rewrite the history of his first term | Opinion
President Donald Trump campaigned by saying Joe Biden was weaponizing the federal government against him. Then Trump signed an executive order that immediately does the same.
Donald Trump, on the first day of his second term as president, used a two-prong attack to target his most pernicious enemy – an accurate history of his first term.
The former real estate developer and convicted felon has been running for president for a solid decade now, so his tactics are easy to spot. He makes unfounded and outlandish allegations, pronounced without proof as unquestionable truth to him and his supporters.
But here we have something new – Trump issued an executive order Monday suggesting that former President Joe Biden's administration may have broken the law in what he has called "the weaponization of the federal government" against political opponents.
That order directs the federal government, from the next attorney general on down, to dig up proof to back up Trump's claim. Imagine Trump's new appointees, eager to please in their first days on the job, keenly aware that the new administration is infused with a paranoid hypersensitivity about disloyalty to the boss.
Sounds like a recipe for bad behavior, right?
But not to worry, new government employees. Trump on Monday also issued a blanket pardon for more than a thousand criminals convicted in the sacking of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump, incensed that he had lost the 2020 election, sent a marauding crowd of his supporters that way.
He also commuted the sentences for 14 people, including members of two far-right groups that had planned the attack.
These two acts will help us translate Trump's presidency going forward. Remember: His go-to play is an inversion of reality.
Trump has to change the Jan. 6 narrative
The federal government tried – but failed because it moved too slowly – to hold him accountable in criminal cases for Jan. 6 and for refusing to return classified documents after he left office in 2021.
So that government must be the real criminals here, right?
The Capitol insurrection was revolting to Americans, including many Republicans, and that looked bad for Trump. So he has to change the narrative. He called the riot "a heinous attack" on Jan. 7, 2021.
On Monday, Trump called the sentences handed out to Jan. 6 criminals "a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people."
Are you ready for four more years of constant deflection and projection? That's what Trump has dialed up for us. We might not be able to stop it. But we can keep him in context. And he hates that.
Trump's executive order about the weaponization of government reads like an instruction manual for weaponizing government. It runs heavy with draconian accusations, including an absurd claim that Biden's administration "engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process."
But the language also goes listless at times. Reading between the lines, you can see Trump issuing directions. Consider this line about federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies just doing their jobs during Biden's administration: "These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives."
Translation: I just spent four years whining about being held accountable, via indictments by grand juries. Now go prove I'm the real victim here.
Jan. 6 rioters aren't victims. More than 1,000 pleaded guilty.
Trump also needs the insurrectionists – he again called them "the J6 hostages" Monday – to look like victims here. That gets tricky quickly, because the range of bad behavior at the Capitol by Trump's supporters that day is so broad.
Sure, there were plenty of people who just wandered around inside a building they were not allowed to enter. And those folks, who helpfully documented their own trespassing on social media, received sentences appropriate for that level of misconduct.
But, among the nearly 1,600 defendants, 608 were charged with "assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement," with 174 of them accused of using "a deadly or dangerous weapon," according to the Department of Justice. More than 1,000 people pleaded guilty while 261 were convicted in court.
Voters and Republicans didn't want these Jan. 6 pardons. Now?
A poll conducted last summer and updated last week for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan, anti-authoritarian group, found that 75% of Americans opposed pardons for Jan. 6 defendants who used weapons. That included 55% of Republicans.
The survey of 1,200 registered voters, conducted in 43 of the country's most competitive congressional districts, showed that 54% thought that pardoning people for political violence encourages more political violence.
It does something else, as well: It puts Trump's allies, from Vice President JD Vance to Republicans in the House and Senate, in an awkward position after having expressed doubts that Trump would really pardon people convicted for violent crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021.
Protect Democracy also compiled a list of commentary from Republicans suggesting that Trump should not do what he just did.
Vance told Fox News last week that nonviolent protesters should be pardoned, but that "if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned."
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, now Trump's nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, said in an NBC News interview last June that she opposed "a blanket approach" to Jan. 6 pardons and favored instead a case-by-case examination.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican notorious for pumping his fist in support of Jan. 6 protesters that day before fleeing from them, told my colleagues at Paste BN for a story Friday that he opposed pardons "for people who assaulted cops, threw stuff at cops, broke down doors, broke windows."
Now those allies must not only make peace with Trump's embrace of violent criminals who tried to overturn a free and fair election but also adhere to his repulsive revision of that history while waiting for his new administration to produce what he is sure to call "proof" that he was always the real victim, all along.
Follow Paste BN elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan