'I heard a lot of walking back': J.D. Vance called out for Fox News Jan. 6 comments

MSNBC contributor Andrew Weissmann called out Vice President-elect J.D. Vance on Sunday for seeming to walk back his boss' campaign pledge to free the "wrongly convicted" Capitol rioters — whom Donald Trump has called "J6 hostages" — in the first hour of his first day back in office.

At campaign rallies, Donald Trump was known to play a recording of himself reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as the "J6 Prison Choir" sang "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Less than a week ago, Trump agreed to consider pardons even for those "charged and convicted of violent crimes." The New York Times quoted Trump as saying, “Well, we’re looking at it," when asked whether he was considering pardoning people charged with violent offenses. “We’ll be looking at the whole thing, but I’ll be making major pardons, yes.”

MSNBC's Jen Psaki played a clip of Vance on Fox News Sunday, saying, "If you protested peacefully on January the 6th and you had Merrick Garland's Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area there, but we're very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law. And there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January the 6th who were prosecuted unfairly — we need to rectify that."

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Psaki asked Weissmann, "What did you hear in that answer?"

"Well, it's interesting," Weissmann answered. "I heard a lot of walking back from, you know, the sort of Trump rallies where he embraced explicitly, sort of, everybody who participated in this violent insurrection. That seemed to be walking back, the sort of, the people who would be the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, who engaged in or were convicted of violent acts. But I think people should remember, we all saw with our eyes, and we're going to see again if there are pardons of people who participated in the violent attack on the Capitol. To sit there — nobody was prosecuted just for showing up and peacefully protesting."

He then elaborated, "There's a First Amendment right. That was not part of why people were convicted, had nothing to do with free speech. It had nothing to do with their political views. People were prosecuted for actions. And, so, I'm not — just focusing on what J.D. Vance said, and, you know, he is a Yale-educated lawyer, so he knows this. The people who were prosecuted, that was not sort of a nonviolent participation in a peaceful protest. It was actually an attack on the Capitol, at the very least."

Watch the clip below via MSNBC or at the link..