‘Why Trump Has Done This Is Beyond Me’: Fox’s Karl Rove Goes Scorched Earth on Ex-President’s Pledge to Pardon Jan. 6 Defendants
Fox News contributor Karl Rove offered some blistering criticism of Donald Trump while speaking with MSNBC’s Ari Melber at an event in Southern California.
On Wednesday’s edition of The Beat, Melber aired footage of his interview with Rove at the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival last month.
“He currently works as a Fox News analyst, which is one of those deals that keeps him off other channels,” Melber noted before calling his discussion with Rove “striking.”
Rove, who was the chief strategist on George W. Bush’s successful 2000 presidential campaign, offered President Joe Biden and Democrats advice on defeating Trump and Republicans in November. Trump has said one of his first acts as president would be to free the Jan. 6 “hostages.”
“If they were smart, they’d take the January 6th and go hard at it,” Rove told Melber. “And they would say, ‘He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol.’ I worked in that building as a young man. To me, the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a jewel of the Constitution.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump inspired a violent mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol. In the two months preceding the deadly insurrection, the former president falsely claimed the election was stolen from him and encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “show strength” on the day the election was certified.
“And what those people did when they violently attacked the Capitol, in order to stop a constitutionally-mandated meeting of the Congress to accept the results of the Electoral College, is a stain on our history,” Rove continued. “And every one of those sons a bitches who did that, we oughta find them, try them, and send them to jail.”
He then expressed bafflement at Trump’s promise to pardon what he called Jan. 6 “hostages”:
And one of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said, “I’m going to pardon those people because they’re hostages.” No, they’re not. They’re thugs. There were people– some of them had automatic weapons at a hotel in Virginia hoping to be able to be called up.
We had people saying, “Where’s Nancy Pelosi?” We had people who were, you know, taking desks and sitting at the desk of the speaker of the House and attempting to find people in order to bring them to justice, and yelling at the police, “Kill them, Kill them all.”
And so, why Trump has done this is beyond me. If he had said, “You know what? I trust our jury system, I trust law enforcement, anybody who assaulted the Capitol oughta be– I mean, he said it once or twice, but now he’s appearing in a video with people who assaulted police officers with an intent to take the Capitol by force.
Rove reiterated that “it’s a mistake on the part of the Trump campaign to allow the president’s impulses to identify himself with the people who assaulted the Capitol rather than people who stand for law and order.”
Last year, CNN’s Maggie Haberman said Trump “sees political advantage” in pardoning the Jan. 6 defendants.
Watch above via MSNBC.
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