'Political loser': CNN conservative meets pushback for downplaying Jan. 6 pardons
A conservative commentator met pushback from fellow CNN panelists for downplaying the political impact of Donald Trump's pardons of all the Jan. 6 rioters.
The president freed all of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss – even those who violently attacked police officers – and Republican political operative Matt Gorman argued the pardons shouldn't haunt his second term because he'd promised to make the move during his campaign.
"Elongating this sort of thing I don't think is very helpful," Gorman said. "I think it was very clear that he wanted to do this. He didn't hide the ball on this like you saw with some of [Joe] Biden's pardons. He was very clear, like, you knew this was going to happen within the first week at the latest. Elongating this I don't think is helpful. At the same time, I don't think there is a political price to be paid by the pardons itself. We'll see if this bleeds into a multi-week story, whether that happens, but I think one of the consistent themes is both Republicans, those in the party that want to defend this or, I think, on the left that really want to push Jan. 6 as a major electoral issue. It hasn't found salience, and we'll see if that changes. It hasn't so far, and there's no evidence to see that it's going to change so far."
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Kendra Barkoff, a former press secretary for Biden when he was vice president, disagreed, saying the pardons would not help Trump.
"I do think this is a political loser of an issue for Donald Trump overall," Barkoff said. "You saw in the interview last night with [Fox News host Sean] Hannity, Donald Trump was talking about Jan. 6. Hannity tried to change the subject to talk about the economy. That's why people voted for Donald Trump to begin with, was to, you know, lower gas prices, lower prices of eggs and milk. Hannity tried to change the subject multiple times to talk about the economy, and Trump kept bringing it back around to Jan. 6, so I think Trump, as long as he wants to keep, you know, talking about Jan. 6, it's going to completely screw up exactly why people, in theory, voted for him as president."
Trump issued a blizzard of executive orders within hours of being sworn in, but few of those had anything to do with the economy.
"Well, I mean, he even said on on Inauguration Day that he wasn't as interested in the economy as he was in immigration, and I think that's when this becomes politically damaging," said Wall Street Journal reporter Molly Ball. "It would be one thing if this was pull off the Band-Aid and move on, but he's not moving on. He's relitigating it over and over and over again, and he's obsessed with it, and you see this with the Republicans on the Hill, as well, on the one hand, saying, let's not live in the past, and then appointing a new committee to reinvestigate all of this stuff. So do they want to move on or don't they? I think if people do start to get the impression that, yes, he was elected to lower the price of groceries and housing, but instead he's focused on making sure that people who assaulted police are let out of jail, that's when it starts to become, I think, a political problem."
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