As he runs for another term as president, ex-President Donald Trump is continuing to stump for participants in the Capitol violence of early 2021, which was spurred by lies tracing to him of a stolen presidential election. At a recent rally in Ohio, he again pledged to prioritize what he characterized as treating detainees with criminal allegations originating in the day more fairly. He’s proposed pardons and their release if he regains the presidency.
On “Morning Joe” on MSNBC this Monday, co-host Joe Scarborough condemned that stance on the Capitol rioters as “demented.”
“You have to be twisted and demented in your head if you can look at the rioting, if you can look at people beating the hell out of American cops, out of police officers, with American flags and trying to kill them and call them ‘hostages’ after they went through the court system. That is a sickness and a twistedness. And you have people continuing to try to apologize for this behavior, starting with Donald Trump — trying to minimize what happened on January 6,” Scarborough, an ex-GOP Congressman, said.
A large share of those charged in connection with the Capitol attack have been specifically accused of often serious violence against police, which was carried out with weapons both prepared and makeshift, a range including implements like riot shields that originated with cops themselves that day. And these are the people about whom Trump is evidently so concerned, claiming them the victims of imagined political plots behind the court proceedings ensnaring them, though a significant portion of the Capitol riot defendants have pleaded guilty.
That long list includes defendant Curtis Logan Tate of Indiana, who admitted to three counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police using a deadly or dangerous weapon, charges that come in the underlying federal law with a combined total of up to 60 years in prison. Tate reportedly used a metal baton and other implements against police.
