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The day after the Jan. 6 attack, Donald Trump came to believe he needed “cover” to remain in the White House. It led the then-president to at least pretend to be upset about the riot he helped instigate.
“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem,” the Republican said on Jan. 7, describing the riot as a “heinous attack.” Reading from a prepared text, Trump added: “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. ... To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: You will pay.”
Five days later, the Republican condemned the “mob [that] stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government.” On the final full day of his term, again reading from a script, Trump added: “All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated.”
Such rhetoric has since been completely overhauled. The presumptive GOP nominee now describes convicted and accused Jan. 6 criminals as “patriots” and “hostages,” whom he’s eager to “free” with pardons on the first day of his prospective second term. In fact, the Associated Press reported this week that Trump has embraced the assault on the Capitol in ways that would’ve seemed difficult to imagine three years ago.
Republican Donald Trump has launched his general election campaign not merely rewriting the history of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, but positioning the violent siege and its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House.
This coincided with a related Semafor report on the degree to which the former president has put Jan. 6 rioters “at the heart of his campaign,” including tasking one of his aides “to work full-time to help January 6 family members.”
At this point, I could spend the next several paragraphs making a spirited case for how offensive this is. I’d note that Jan. 6 was among the most important acts of political violence in American history; it was the most dangerous part of an illegal scheme to overturn a presidential election; and it was a deadly insurrectionist riot, fueled by a loser with a fragile ego, that needlessly endangered our system of government.
But for now, let’s put all of that aside and consider a related and underappreciated question: Does Trump realize how politically risky this is?
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty recently spoke to one of the Republican’s campaign strategists who said, “There’s nothing they can say about Trump that voters don’t already know.”
The problem with this assumption is that it’s completely wrong.
It’s true, of course, that Trump has become one of the most scrutinized figures in the world, but it’s also true that much of the public is completely unaware of many of his recent scandals, while other voters have forgotten major events over the course of the last three years.
Columbia Journalism Review recently spoke to Celinda Lake, one of the leading pollsters who worked on President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, who was recently stunned during a focus group session with swing voters.
According to the report, Lake had asked how the voters felt about Trump’s indictment related to Jan. 6.
“They go, ‘What court case around Jan. 6?’” the pollster recalled. “These were swing voters, and about half of them weren’t sure what we were talking about. And I said, ‘Well, you know, the insurrection and that he was the one that provoked it.’ They go, ‘Oh, yeah. I kind of forgot about that.’”
To be sure, it’s unsettling to realize that some Americans are this uninformed about current events in their own country, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: There are some voters who’ve forgotten about Trump, Jan. 6, and the related indictment, and the presumptive Republican nominee appears to be taking steps that will remind them.
As a matter of political strategy, that isn’t smart. The former president appears eager to do it anyway.