Is this national outrage old news?

Of the roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants pardoned by Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, about 600 had been charged with assaulting or obstructing police, and about 170 had been accused of using deadly or dangerous weapons during the siege.

Among those pardoned were men who had received long federal sentences for their attacks on officers: one got 14 years for throwing a chair at police and repeatedly using pepper spray on officers; another assaulted an officer with a stun gun and texted a friend, “Tazzzzed the fuck out of the blue”; another attacked officers with bear spray and a metal whip; another assaulted an officer with a crutch and also used pepper spray on police.

The next day, Trump held a press conference and said: “I am a friend of police, more than any president who’s been in office.” Speaking of the rioters, he added: “These were people that actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate.” (I think I may try robbing a bank and then, in court, pepper spray the bailiff, tell the judge I love my country, and throw myself on the mercy of the court.)

Then there’s the number of these country-loving individuals who have since been arrested for other crimes (about 33), which include charges of breaking and entering, child sex crimes, illegal possession of weapons, domestic violence, DUI, reckless driving causing a fatality, and rape charges. Oh, and then there’s the guy who threatened to kill Hakeem Jeffries. (More on the post-pardon crimes here.)

In a sane nation in which we don’t reside, the pardons would rank among the most scandalous acts by a president in American history. Maybe the most scandalous. (They would get my vote.) Q: Is the pardoning worse than Nixon’s role in Watergate and its subsequent cover-up? A: Yes.

Why write about this now? The pardons happened a year ago. Some will say this is old news. That points to a symptom of the grave national illness that has seized us. Trump, his minions, and MAGA generate so many shocks—vulgarities, lies, insults, lunges toward totalitarianism, displays of appalling ignorance—that the mind can’t keep up. Even something as grim as mass pardons for people charged with extremely serious violence against police can simply scroll down and then off our national screen.

I’ve already concluded long ago that our grandchildren will ask why we let this happen. It makes me wonder if they will also remember us for failing to remember.

Much of the information about the rioters’ conduct was reported by Jeffrey Goldstein in The Atlantic, and elsewhere.