During a recent discussion on Fox News with host Howard Kurtz, footage of which was earlier flagged by Raw Story, a Democratic Party-aligned contributor blasted the idea of issuing a pardon for former President Donald Trump amid his sprawling criminal cases.
The presidential pardon idea raised during the broadcast by conservative guest Clay Travis would only even apply to two of Trump’s four criminal cases, since that’s how many are overseen by federal authorities. Trump would still face charges in Georgia and New York City.
“Trying to steal an election — we’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve also never seen anything in this country like January 6,” the liberal commentator, Ameshia Cross, said. “It would be completely ignorant for anyone to try to downplay both of those incidents or the fact that there was a sitting U.S. president who was calling into state offices across the country trying to nullify the votes of everyday Americans… There is no amount of a pardon that should come for a former president who, one, did not act like a president and, two, did not uphold the values of our democracy.”
Remarkably, Travis mocked the idea that January 6 was particularly significant at all. Would he use the same sneering tone that he utilized during this broadcast to the faces of police officers who were violently assaulted that day, some to the point of impeding their basic ability to do their job? He referenced isolated instances of violence seen during the protests for racial justice in 2020, isolated instances that conservatives have used to pretend as though the vast majority of legitimately and wholly peaceful expressions of outrage just didn’t exist. Can’t two things — isolated instances of violence and a semi-organized assault on the U.S. Capitol meant to disrupt the transfer of power — both be considered bad? Democrats, in reality, have consistently condemned that previous year’s violence.
