What's Tony Thinking

Trump Had a Chance to Do the Right Thing and Failed

The thing that worried me most about Donald Trump is his lack of regard for the law or for the rule of law. His commutation of the sentences of virtually all the January 6 convicted rioters confirms those fears.

He could have, as his Vice-President, J. D. Vance, said he “obviously would” distinguish between violent and non-violent actors. His nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, had said the same thing, and indicated she would review the cases “on a case-by-case” basis.

By not making that distinction and commuting the sentences and releasing from prison 172 individuals who committed violent crimes against the D.C. and Capitol police, Trump has failed. He has also done what I thought he would do. He has overreached.

Had he made the distinction between violent and non-violent offenders, he would have shown that he had learned something since that fateful January 6 day. He has not. But why?

Trump is incapable of admitting any error on his own part. So if the law and courts find that he is at fault, it is the law and the courts that are wrong. He simply will not, or cannot, admit any failure, error, wrong choices or actions. This will prove to be his undoing. It led to overreach not just in the case of the J6 defendants and convicts but will in other areas as well. If he had let the violent offenders stay put, it would have been an admission that something went badly wrong on January 6 2021, and he bore some of the responsibility for it.

This inability to acknowledge mistakes is also evident in his version of Christian faith. He claims to be a Christian but also says that he neither needs, nor has ever needed, forgiveness for anything. He has never done anything wrong. For a Christian that is a non-sequitur. We are, by definition, sinners in need of grace. Not some of us. All of us. “All have sinned,” wrote the apostle Paul, “all have fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3) We all fail. We are all imperfect.

This is also one thing Trump and Putin have in common. Putin, a big booster of the Russian Orthodox Church for political reasons, famously declined to ritually prostrate himself in a penitential worship service. He said, like Trump, that he has never done anything wrong and therefore needs no forgiveness. I guess if you admit one error or flaw the whole edifice is in danger of collapse.

The other reason for Trump to commute the sentences of all, including violent offenders — beyond his inability to admit an error on his part — is possibly even more sinister. It is a signal to those who are inclined to political violence that it will not only be tolerated, but rewarded.

Right now, Trump and his allies are under a full head of steam, flinging out executive orders like a hot dog vendor at a baseball game. His commutation of the January 6 violent offenders is an early act of overreaching. Others may be in the works in relation to citizenship, deportation and energy/ climate.

He had a chance to do the right thing. He had a chance to show that he wasn’t the same guy he was on January 6, 2021. He failed. Will Vance or Bondi say anything? Will other Republicans? What about Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who claims the Bible is his manual?

All this said, the events of Jan. 6, 2021 still stand, vividly documented, in the historical record. What happened then cannot be pardoned, commutated or expunged away. As Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote when dismissing a case against a Jan. 6 defendant, “The dismissal of this case cannot undo the ‘rampage that left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage.’”

Republicans want to overlook January 6, saying, “That’s looking backward. We are moving forward.” Trump had a chance to show he had moved forward and help the nation to do so. He blew it, badly.

p.s. I note with interest, that a blog I wrote last February on Trump and demonic power remains widely read on the internet.