A conservative commentator sparked a clash on CNN by suggesting that President Joe Biden's pardon of his son opened the door to Donald Trump extending clemency to the Jan. 6 rioters.
The president issued a sweeping pardon to his son Hunter Biden last week, before he was set to be sentenced for convictions on firearm and tax charges, and he is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for some individuals who Trump has threatened to prosecute as retribution for his own criminal indictments.
"I'm not a believer in the preemptive pardons," said New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro on CNN, "because I think what ends up happening is Donald Trump distorts what we consider to be acceptable, and no one has ever done a preemptive pardon before. It would be really pushing the boundaries of what the norms are. He constantly does that and just in a comment already they're having this reaction.
"He hasn't done anything, Kash Patel hasn't been actually put into into power yet, and so I do think that Democrats and Republicans who might be targeted probably need to calm down. ... I don't think that this is spurious. It may very well happen, but I think this idea of preemptive pardons and putting Biden in that position, I don't think it's wise."
Republican strategist Matt Gorman disagreed with her premise, saying that Biden had shattered norms by pardoning his son.
"I think the norm breaker was was the Hunter pardon a week ago, right, and that that led to the preemptive pardons," Gorman said, "and I think candidly, that made it a lot easier, a lot easier for Trump to talk about Jan. 6 pardons like he's doing now."
Garcia-Navarro wasn't buying it, saying that Trump had been promising to pardon at least some of his supporters during his re-election campaign.
"Oh, come on, come on," she said. "He's been talking about Jan. 6 pardons for years."
Gorman argued that's what set Trump's promised pardons apart.
"Excuse me, first of all – but, you know, he also is open about it," Gorman said. "He's not lying about it like Biden did for months."
Garcia-Navarro pushed back, saying that anger flashed on Trump's face during his interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he talked about the jailed rioters, and she said he intended to turn them into political martyrs.
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"We're going to see, and I am pretty sure, the Jan. 6 people pardoned and probably given congressional you know, not congressional, but like presidential medals."
"What what proof do you have of that?" Gorman interjected. "You know, medals at the White House – that's ridiculous. What proof do you have?"
"I'm joking, obviously," Garcia-Navarro added, "but what I'm saying here is that for for Donald Trump, what matters is that these people are pardoned because they reflect on him. He sees them as his emissaries, he doesn't think that what happened on Jan. 6 was an assault on the government, and so therefore exonerating them exonerates him."
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