Trump's Jan 6 Pardons Re-Energize Far-Right Groups
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It's Thursday, January 23rd. I'm Jane Koston, and this is Water Day, the show wishing a happy snow day to everyone in the American South experiencing once-in-a-lifetime snowfall. We know you aren't used to it, and it's probably scary, but sometimes frozen water falls from the sky. It's crazy. On today's show, President Donald Trump issues an executive order blocking the resettlement of refugees in the U.S., including thousands of Afghans. And the House passed its first piece of legislation under the new administration. Let's get into it.

It's been a couple of days since President Donald Trump granted clemency to all of his nearly 1,600 supporters who faced charges for storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Most of them received full, complete, and unconditional pardons for their actions that day. The 14 people who didn't get pardons instead had their sentences commuted.

They were all members of far-right militia groups, either the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. As you'd expect, many of these people were positively giddy about the fact that they were getting out of prison, and giddy in a way that's terrifying to pretty much anyone who's not steeped in the alternative MAGA universe version of what actually happened that day.

Stuart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Trump commuted his sentence. After his release Tuesday, he thanked Trump and repeated lies about what happened at the Capitol that day. Most people that went inside, they walked in through doors already opened by somebody else. They were not told they were trespassing. In fact, some cops waved them in. And so you had basically this entrapment. So we're all crazy and didn't see what we saw. Got it.

And what did Rhodes do on his first full day of freedom Wednesday? I am not making this up. The man went to the Capitol to advocate for a pardon for another member of the Oath Keepers in another case. Wild. Enrique Tarrio, the self-proclaimed chairman of the Proud Boys, was facing 22 years in prison. He got a full pardon, so he walked free Tuesday. And of course, he spent his first few hours out of prison giving an interview to none other than Mr. Conspiracy Theorist himself,

Alex Jones. Tarrio expressed all of the contrition you'd expect from him, which is none. I'm happy that the president's focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I'm not going to play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars and they need to be prosecuted

And Jacob Anthony Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman, who was seen that day standing in then-Vice President Mike Pence's chair, the guy who left him a note that said, it's only a matter of time. Justice is coming? Yeah, he got a pardon. How does he plan to celebrate? Well, he tweeted Tuesday, and I quote, now I am gonna buy some motherfucking guns.

And as if all of this weren't horrifying enough, CNN reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is considering whether to invite some of the people he pardoned Monday to the White House. And Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert says she wants to spend some quality time with the rioters. I'll be the first member of Congress to offer them a guided tour in the Capitol. I think I speak for everyone listening right now when I say, what in the actual fuck?

So to talk about what Trump's actions this week mean for right-wing extremist groups and the threat of political violence in America under Trump, I spoke with Tess Owen. She's a freelance reporter covering extremism and politics. Tess, welcome to What A Day. Thank you so much for having me. So Donald Trump and a ton of Republicans would have us all believe that the people who were charged in connection with the January 6th insurrection were just peaceful tourists, one wearing a weird hat, just hanging out. And

and that the Justice Department was overzealous in charging them. But can you remind us what some of the people were charged with and sent to prison for? Sure. So we have one of the most serious charges of the bunch, the seditious conspiracy charges. Some of the Proud Boy leaders copped charges for that. Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, he was sentenced to 22 years. We had Joe Biggs,

Zachary Rell, Ethan Nordean, who are all prominent leaders within the Proud Boys movement. They all got between 15 and 19 years. We had Stuart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, also got seditious conspiracy charges. And then we had a bunch of people who were getting charges for assault on police. People who attacked Capitol Police for hours on end using a variety of improvised objects.

We had Lonnie Kaufman, who parked a truck near the Capitol that was loaded with Molotov cocktails and various weapons. The list goes on. How have these pardons been received in the world of far-right extremist groups? Because I know that some of these people are talking about, we want retribution. We want the people who prosecuted us, even the juries that convicted us, to now go to jail.

I think we're kind of hearing the reactions bit by bit. I think some of these guys I'd spoken to even a couple months ago, I think that they would have been pretty surprised that they got a pardon. And yeah, you're right. The response within the movement and from those we're hearing from already has been, first of all, vindication. And second of all,

now we want revenge. We want to go after the people who did this to us. We want to go after the FBI agents. We want to go after the so-called deep state, the prosecutors, and make sure that they are behind bars. So Trump has a very loyal army at his commanding now. And yeah, we'll see what happens next.

And what do you think the reaction has been more broadly? Because the vibe seems to be one of resignation more than anything else. I know that, you know, there's not very many ways to fight a presidential pardon, but is that your sense, too, that like some of the outrage that we may have seen the first time around that Trump is president just isn't there, even around something like this? Like you have a host of, you know, conservative outlets, the Wall Street Journal saying that this is bad, but also like a lot of people just kind of being like, what can you do?

I mean, I think people are a bit numb. Even I personally have covered this stuff, the extremism movement for eight years now. And

And even I was sort of surprised, but still a bit numb by the scale of the pardons that happened. And, you know, on Inauguration Day, we saw probably the biggest mobilization of Proud Boys since January 6th, marching in Washington, D.C. And they're chanting, you know, whose streets are streets, and they were getting fist bumps by people in the crowd. And there wasn't really like a robust opposition. Right.

counter-protests like we would have seen maybe a few years ago. So I think there is a sense of resignation, like you said, or a bit of numbness going on as well. It's funny to say this, but a lot has happened since January 6th, and a lot has happened to people within these organizations. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Unite the Right, the gathering that took place in 2017 where you saw these organizations at, you know, white pride, white power organizations at the peak of their power,

And then they just fell apart in a lot of different ways. So what has happened to these groups since January 6th? What has happened to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers? And what do you think is next for these organizations now that they've been freed from jail and by and large had their crimes forgiven?

So with the Proud Boys, I mean, in the run up to January 6th, their MO was kind of these large scale mobilizations in cities where they would show up in, you know, decked out in yellow and black and they would come drinking, you know, reeking of beer and looking for fights with local leftists. And there were these spectacles, right? And then after January 6th,

we saw pivot away from that kind of mobilizations into much smaller hyper-local activism. So we saw kind of maybe forward pop up at a drag brunch somewhere or at the school board meeting. And we saw them forging alliances with local Christian nationalist groups. We also saw, I mean, with Enrique Tarrio, the group's chairman, that sort of left the movement leaderless.

And the sovereign chapter was dissolved. And there was sort of some infighting that's happened as well within that group. And so it's not as cohesive as it once was. And then, you know, we didn't really see the same kind of show of force for Trump, you know, in 2024 as we did in 2020. And so that was maybe leading to speculation that, you know, always is the group done on its last legs?

Certainly, the demonstration on Inauguration Day, that was intended to send us a message of like, you know, we're back. But, you know, as Enrique Tarrio, you know, he is now free. He has been given a full pardon. He was on Alex Jones hours after he was released and said it would be a mistake to call him the ex-chairman. He is still very much involved with the Proud Boys.

But I think the group that he's coming back to is not the one that he left. So I think they're full of bluster, those guys. They would like us to think that they are...

You know, strong and very active, but that's simply not always the case. But they're also just one element, one piece of this much larger movement. And I think what we saw with January 6th was that you don't need to be a card carrying member of an extremist group to engage in violence on behalf of Donald Trump or on behalf of the MAGA movement.

and the kind of mainstreaming of anti-government violence is something that we've seen a lot in the last few years. Something I keep thinking about, though, and we've already actually seen it, one of the January 6th defendants who had been charged with felony assault was arrested again on federal gun charges. And I think that, you know,

A lot of people involved in January 6th had no previous criminal backgrounds, and a lot of people did. So do you see a situation where this backfires on Trump? Because a host of the people with the most serious charges are people who are likely probably involved in something that could result in further charges. Do you see that being a problem for Trump? I think one question that came up or one that I've been thinking about a lot was,

whether, you know, this movement has radicalized in the last few years, especially for those who are in prison. We know prison radicalization is a big problem. And I've written about the so-called Patriot Wing in the D.C. jail, which was the unit inside the jail that was being used to sequester pre-trial detainees, January Sixers, away from the general population. And

They formed a very tight-knit community there, and they were supported, had enormous amounts of support from the outside that really reinforced the same beliefs and anti-government sentiments and deepened the anti-government beliefs that brought them to the capital in the first place. And so...

all these people who, you know, stormed the Capitol are now kind of even more entrenched in that belief system. And what does this mean for the national story around January 6th and the way we understand what happened that day? I mean, I know what happened and you know what happened, but former President Biden issued preemptive pardons from members of the congressional committee that investigated the insurrection. And now the people who perpetrated it have been freed. And despite what I remember and you remember, it feels murky.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the last few years has really been a kind of fight for the story or for the control of the narrative of January 6th.

Well, first of all, there was widespread condemnation of January 6th on both sides of the aisle. And then we saw attempts to, you know, oh, there were bad actors involved. There were, it was Antifa. It was, you know, Antifa super soldiers were in the crowd and they instigated it. And then it was the FBI. That narrative has kind of held that, you know, FBI agents, this has been debunked, but were kind of among the crowd and they goaded MAGA supporters into committing violence there.

And then there was the hostages narrative that these people are hostages of a corrupt and tyrannical Biden administration who is hell-bent on prosecuting and jailing his political opponents. And that January 6th was in some ways a noble cause. And this is the narrative that comes through now with the pardons, that these people were standing up for a just cause and they were prosecuted unfairly by a tyrannical regime. You know, heavy quotes.

Tess, thank you so much for joining me. This has been super helpful. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan. That was my conversation with Tess Owen, freelance reporter covering extremism and politics. We'll link to her work in our show notes. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What Today is brought to you by Lumen. Are you ready to jumpstart your health in 2025? Lumen

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House Speaker Mike Johnson gave his first press conference since Trump's inauguration on Wednesday. He said he wouldn't second-guess Trump's decision to pardon the January 6th rioters. Instead, he slammed former President Biden's decision to issue preemptive pardons for members of his family, members of Congress who investigated the insurrection, and others. To us, it is disgusting. To us, it probably proves the point, the suspicion,

that, you know, they call it the Biden crime family. If they weren't the crime family, why do they need pardons, right? Why do they need pardons indeed? In fact, Johnson threw more kerosene on the whole. Let's rewrite the story around what happened on January 6th political fire.

In a press release, his office announced plans to form a new House committee to continue Republicans' work, quote, exposing the false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6th select committee. True is false. False is true. Maybe it's all an attempt to distract from the fact that Republicans haven't hammered out a legislative plan to pass Trump's agenda of tax cuts and lifting the debt ceiling and making life hell for migrants while also dramatically cutting government spending. But

But Johnson tried to spin it as best he could. This is exactly how the founding fathers anticipated the process would work. They wanted people, legislators with good faith, citizen legislators to come to Washington, D.C. and bring their principles and bring their preferences and come to the table and work it out amongst themselves. It is a healthy thing. We're excited about it. It's going very, very well. So stay tuned for the details. They're coming.

Sure, I'm sure James Madison would be thrilled. We, for one, wouldn't mind if Republicans just kept fighting about Trump's legislative agenda. That's a small win for us.

The State Department suspended the U.S. refugee admissions program late Tuesday following an executive order by President Donald Trump. Sean Vanderveer, head of a volunteer group called Afghan EVAC, told Whataday the program is not only a legal immigration pathway, but is also extremely well vetted. So the United States has long been a beacon of hope for immigrants, or used to be, and...

This program is how many immigrants get here. The suspension paused all refugee flights into the U.S., leaving thousands of refugees stranded worldwide, including more than 1,600 Afghans. There's still a separate immigration pathway for Afghans who worked for the U.S. government or military, but Van de Veer said that program is harder to access. The types of people that are impacted by this suspension are family of U.S. service members, are judges and lawyers and prosecutors who put the Taliban away. They're

Women pilots who served in the Afghan military, other people that served in the Afghan military, children who were separated from their families and families who were separated from their children.

Trump also reduced refugee admissions in his first term. Van de Veer said the Biden administration worked to rebuild the program. According to the State Department, nearly 200,000 Afghans were resettled in the U.S. under former President Biden. Van de Veer said his organization is working on communicating with the new administration because this isn't a partisan issue, it's an American issue. He said, quote, President Trump loves to negotiate. We can't wait to negotiate on this.

The Trump administration's promised crackdown on immigration is continuing full steam ahead. The Republican-led House passed an immigration detention measure with bipartisan support on Wednesday. The Lake and Riley Act is expected to be the first bill Trump signs into law. The legislation is named after a nursing school student who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia last year. The act would require ICE to take custody of and detain undocumented immigrants charged, arrested, or convicted of committing acts of, quote, burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was full-throated in her support of the bill during a floor speech Wednesday. I certainly hope we do open as many prisons as possible to round up as many illegal aliens that have invaded our country and those that are breaking our laws, killing our citizens, women and children, and causing complete havoc across our great land. That's some bullshit.

More than 40 House Dems joined Republicans in passing the bill, especially those in competitive districts. Other Democrats have called the legislation an unfunded mandate that will cost billions. According to an internal government memo obtained by multiple news outlets, Trump is considering deploying as many as 10,000 soldiers to the southern border.

The Trump administration issued guidance on Tuesday that bars federal health agencies from using external communications. The Health and Human Services Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all fall into this category. They've been instructed to stop sending out any alerts, reports, press releases, basically anything that keeps us informed about risks to our health. For example, the CDC was set to release multiple reports about bird flu cases in the U.S. this week.

It's unclear if those will be released now. The new guidance also requires agency employees to get approval from a presidential appointee before releasing any external communications materials. And it bars employees from making public appearances or speeches. Acting House Secretary Dr. Dorothy Fink said the directive will last until February 1st. All of this paired with the fact that Trump signed another executive order this week pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization does not bode well. And that's the news.

One more thing. I'll say it. Part of the problem we're facing dealing with all of this is that Democratic Party leadership is too dang old. And we've talked on the show a bunch about the fight to elect younger leaders in the Democratic Party and how those efforts have been squashed. It's an important conversation that we have to keep up these next four years while we wait for another shot at the White House. Heck, the next two years, because 2026 is just a few months away.

And it's one that has been a focus for gun control activist David Hogg. He's 24 and best known for being a co-founder of March for Our Lives, a nonprofit founded by students who survived the 2018 Parkland high school shooting. And

And now he's running to be vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. He's already scored some major endorsements from progressives, notably from Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Minnesota governor and former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. So I called him up to ask about how the Democrats can better listen to and speak to the needs of young voters. David, welcome to What Today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Your own work as an activist began during the first Trump administration after the Parkland shooting in 2018.

What are you worried about over the next four years when it comes to guns and how guns will impact public safety in the U.S.? I mean, I'm extremely worried. I'm more worried than anything because we finally under the under President Biden, we created the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

And this office was absolutely instrumental in seeing the double digit reduction in gun homicides that we've seen since President Biden was elected. It made sure that the billions of dollars that had been allocated to fight gun violence across the federal government and other money that had been allocated for other issues that nonetheless could help

fight gun violence was being spent properly. And it's really horrifying to see that obviously that office is gone now under President Trump. But we have done a lot of the work at the state level to help create different offices of gun violence prevention in states around the country.

You've talked a lot about why Democrats lost a lot of young voters to Trump, young men in particular. You told ABC News that you want to, quote, meet these men where they're at. But what does that actually look like? What concrete actions would you take as DNC vice chair to win back young men as a whole? How is it different from what Democrats have been doing in the past? Yeah.

I think a lot of the problem that we have with our party isn't necessarily our policies, frankly. We see them pass by wide margins, including states like Florida. But to me, the problem is our brand. I think that one of the biggest obstacles that we have

isn't so much that young men necessarily disagree with our policies. I think that, you know, they agree, broadly speaking, with obviously fighting gun violence, with fighting climate change. I think what it's a reaction to in particular is them feeling like they're just judged constantly. And if we can build a culture, I think, within our party where we bring people in and educate them and listen to them, because I think what's happening is that they would rather be around somebody that they don't completely agree with

but doesn't judge them, or at least they don't feel judged by, than somebody who they do agree with largely, but feel like they have to walk on eggshells around. We need to realize too that Gen Z is not a monolith. I think we need somebody in the room that understands that. And what concerns me is, you know, when I was at the executive committee meeting for the DNC, I was there and I was listening to Molly, our pollster, talk about why we lost the election.

And the first thing that Molly brought up was the fact that 18 to 29 year olds, there was a dramatic shift to the right. And when I looked around the room, I didn't see anybody under 30 that was there. And it seems to me like our party thinks like we can just consult our way out of these problems. We just throw enough money at it. That's going to solve it. We need to be talking to the nonpolitical influencers and

and crafting a message that doesn't even need to be put there by us or forced to be made there or paid where we don't need to pay somebody to say it for us because it's compelling enough that they're sharing it. After Parkland, we saw just that. The reason we were able to have so much of an

of an impact like we were to build the largest student protest in American history isn't because we were like, you know what we need to do, guys? We got to be on Discord. We got to be on Fortnite. No, it's because we knew how to talk to young people and we built a message that resonated with them. Dems won't get another shot at the presidency until 2028. There are tons of elections at the national and local level that they can win in the meantime because...

A lot of people don't like what's going on right now. There is time to rethink how this party messages to voters and what the party's message is. What do you think we need to do over the next two years to get out of this mess? Listen to people. It's really not complicated. I think during this election, voters effectively told us two things more than anything else. They told us that prices were too high and Joe Biden was too old.

And what we told them, in effect, with $2 billion behind it, was that no, they're not. And no, he's not. And after we spent eight years saying Donald Trump is the greatest threat to American democracy ever, you need to give me $5 right now to help prevent that. When he was elected,

You know what it sounded like a lot of the response was to me was effectively, well, guys, we tried our best. We'll see you again in four years. That's not what accountability looks like to me. That's not what leadership looks like to me. What it looks like is talking about what we did wrong and what we're going to do differently this time. In my own way of talking about that accountability, what I'm going to say here to you is that during this election, I made mistakes too. When I met with President Biden and he asked me how to get young voters, I was one on one with him in the Oval Office.

And at that point in our party, we were not in a place where we could speak openly about whether or not he should continue running or doing a second term because we didn't want it to end. He was an amazing president. What I wish I told him was that he needed to drop out in order to get those young people. I obviously would have been kicked out of that meeting and never welcomed back, to be clear, but at least I would have told him what he needed to hear.

But I didn't do that, and I wish I hadn't. It's something that I am never going to forget. It's something I will think about pretty much every day that I continue to do this work. Because ultimately, the most important thing that our party needs to do is win in order to combat gun violence and save lives. That is the top priority. David, thank you so much for joining me. Absolutely. That was my conversation with DNC Vice Chair candidate David Hogg.

Before we go, in the first few days of Trump's second term, shock tactics and sweeping executive orders are taking center stage. On the latest episode of Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams is joined by strict scrutiny's Melissa Murray to dissect the impact of these moves, from renaming Denali to ending birthright citizenship. Thanks for watching.

They explore the threat to the balance of power, why we should be concerned about the new bro-ligarchy that stood behind Trump at his inauguration, and how we can resist and fight back to safeguard our democracy. Listen to this episode of Assembly Required now. New episodes drop every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, maybe find a new hobby that you enjoy because it's going to be a long four years, guys. And tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading and not just about how finding hobbies can also be a helpful way to find community, which matters a lot right now, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston. And really what I'm saying is go outside and do something you like.

Waterday is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fore. Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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