6 events in Passaic County with a date

How does GOP that support police accept January 6 pardons?

By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA Today Network

..... Ever since Richard Nixon waged his law-and-order campaign for president amid social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, the GOP has prided itself as the party that champions police officers.
..... "Tye stand as the guardians of the fragile thread of order and civility that separate a civilized society from mankind's barbarous past," President Ronald Reagan proclaimed during National Police week in 1982.
..... But when it comes to the barbarous attack on police officers at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, most of the modern Republican Party has abandoned its commitment to police., swapping out solidarity for fealty to President Donald Trump.
..... Trump attempting once again to whitewash the January 6 [2021] attack that he fomented, issued a mass pardon and commutations of the sentences of January 6 [2021] :hostages," including convicts who wielded bats and clubs and bear spray and stanchions - anything they could do to break the blue wall of police desperately performing their sworn duty to prevent them from ransacking the capitol.
..... Handling out get-out-of-jail cards to rioters who attacked police as they sought to disrupt the routine certification of the 2020 election results was another Trumpian blow to the democratic order. No one is being held accountable. The rule of law, held with such sacred esteem, has been tossed och the jail-house window.
..... "For all the pro-blue mounting off for as long as [Trump] has been in the public eye, the pardoning of the J6 rioters was a slap in the face of all law enforcement; not just the Capitol cops and Metro police of D.C., but everyone who ware a badge," said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University.
..... More than 140 officers were assaulted that day and one of them South river, New Jersey, native Brian Sicknick, 42, was bear-sprayed amid the attack and died the next day from two strokes.
...... Trump also sprang free two leaders of extremist right-wing groups who had been sentenced to long prison terms, steward Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, had assembled an arsenal of weaponry for the capitol siege. And Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was described by the Justice Department as "inflaming the group with rage against law enforcement and then turning it loose on the Capitol."

What did NJ Republicans say?

..... For some Republicans, Trump's action was indefensible and made a mockery of the GOP brand.
..... Jon Bramnick, a Republican candidate for governor this year [2025] who has position himself as a moderate never-Trumper, denounced the pardons of those who inflicted violence on police and wared of the lasting damage it could have on the party's reputation.
..... "Republicans are proud to support law enforcement but if we are to remain constituent in that message, we cannot condone any violence against police - especially through presidential pardons," Bramnick wrote in a statement.
..... Other New Jersey Republicans hid under the same rock that sheltered them thorough past Trump firestorms.
..... Jack Ciatarelli, the former assemblyman making his third run for governor, did not respond to a message seeking comment, and his social media platforms - which serve as the new mouthpiece for politicians - had nothing to say about Trumps pardons. Most of the Ciattarelli campaign account's recent posts featured pictures of its candidate praising Trump's executive orders and cavorting around the inaugural festivities earlier this week. [01/20/2025]
..... But Trump, of course, had his defenders, like Bill Spadea, the right-wing radio provocateur and candidate for governor who featured Trump on his radio show. in a post on X, Spadea exuded the pardons as a necessary corrective to the "weaponize" of the Justice department under President Joe Biden.
..... "As you know from my decade plus public history, I will always put law enforcement first. At the same time I 100% support President Trumps pardons for those involved four years ago as we need to recognize and defeat the ongoing efforts of the Democrats and bureaucracy to weaponize our justice system," he wrote.
..... This is the false-equivalency nonsense peddled by MAGA and Trump's supporters, an attempt to describe the "hostages" as victims of a political witch hunt while dismissing the forensic evidence, the testimony and, in some cases the perusal admissions of the insurrectionists. But then avians MAGA lives by what Jersey-born Kellyanne Conway once described as "alternate facts."
..... Ed "The Trucker" Durr, another GOP candidate for governor, offered up a dose of whataboutism in his defense of trump. He took aim at New Jersey's Senator Andy Kim, who honored Sicknick and decried the pardons and the ramifications.
..... Kim expressed concern that the pardons might only breed more political violence.
..... "The fact that some Americans celebrated Trump's pardons; how emboldened those who seek political violence in America must feel," Kim wrote.
..... Goonery will now be protected.
..... But Durr, whose claim to fame was his 2021 dethroning of Senate President Steve Sweeney before being routed out of office two years later, scoffed at Kim and brought up President Joe Biden's last-minute pardons.
..... "Your lies about J6 knowing only 1 person died that day (Assli Babbit) is all about politics & optics. Still waiting for your outrage to the thousands of pardons @Joe Biden,: he wrote.

Awaiting the next spin cycle

..... As it has been in past trump outrages, the Republicans are holding their breath and hoping the news cycle moves on to the next outrage and the pardons will fade into the rear-view mirror. They'll hope Trump can spin his way out of the controversy, as he tries to do at a press coference on Tuesday. [01/21/2025]
..... When asked about the case of D.J. Rodriguez, who confessed to the FBI and later pleaded guilty of driving a stun gun into the neck of a police offer, Trump said he wasn't aware of the details of that case.
..... Instead he made the claim that "murderers today [01/21/2025] are not charged."
..... "I am the friend of police ... more than any president that has been in this office," he said.
..... That kind of self-serving spin is a far cry from another president who held the office in 1982.
..... "T Hose officers who have made the supreme sacrifice," Reagen proclaimed, "have demonstrated their devotion to the fundamental values of decency so essential to the well-being of American life."

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