With CBS Mornings freaking out about a number of matters related to Monday’s second inauguration of President Trump, the fervently anti-Trump partisans at ABC’s Good Morning America were apoplectic over the pardons of January 6 defendants to the point everything else was painted as either fringe or blurry.
“We are going to begin with President Trump’s first day in office. Unprecedented scope of actions. The President signed a number of executive actions ranging from pardoning the January 6 rioters, he declared a national emergency at the Mexican border, suggesting we would be facing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, also withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization and climate change accords,” co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos began.
Chief White House correspondent and former Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce played Captain Obvious in saying “we are in a whole new era” with Trump’s “remarkable show of the use of executive power, granting a blanket pardon to virtually everyone charged or convicted for the January 6 attack and moving quickly to undue the agenda of his predecessors.”
“Overnight with the stroke of a pen, President Trump moving swiftly and aggressively to make good on his campaign promises, issuing sweeping pardons to nearly all of the rioters charged for their actions on January 6,” she added.
Bruce clicked through some of those pardoned amid clips of the chaos from that ugly day in 2021 (click “expand”):
BRUCE: The full, complete, and unconditional pardons include the former leader of the far-right group the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio sentenced to 22 years for sedition. Trump also commuting the sentences of 14 others charged with division, including Stuart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keeper militia, sentenced to 18 years. Trump even granting clemency to the more than 600 people charged with assaulting and resisting law enforcement. Rioters on January 6 attacking police, using everything from shields to flag poles, even cattle prods. The day after the attack, Trump with this promise.
TRUMP [on 01/07/21]: To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.
BRUCE: But now? Instead, he is reversing years of efforts to bring accountability for the attack that sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 election. Craig Sicknick, the brother of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who died after he was attacked on January 6, telling ABC News that Trump’s pardons are a betrayal of decency. Overnight, supporters of the January 6 rioters celebrating outside the D.C. jail. At least two released so far.
Following a brief detour noting Trump attended the traditional inaugural balls and, yes, “took the oath of office,” Bruce made sure to pay homage to her former beloved, Joe and Jill Biden (click “expand”):
BRUCE: Earlier, Joe Biden greeting Trump at the White House with two words: Welcome home.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Welcome home.
BRUCE: The Bidens and Trump’s having tea, then the incoming and outgoing Presidents riding together to the Capitol. The Trumps there also to bid farewell to the Bidens, longstanding traditions that Trump refused to participate in four years ago, but Biden adamant that the nation witness democracy in action and see a peaceful transition. [APPLAUSE] There in the rotunda was Biden looking on, Trump pledging to bring back what he called a nation in decline.
TRUMP: From this moment on, America’s decline is over. [APPLAUSE]
As for the other executive orders, Bruce kvetched Trump “slash[ed] funding to combat climate change,” axing “recognition of transgender identity,” and framed another U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord as extreme because “[t]he U.S. join[ed] Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only four countries not in the agreement.”
More January 6 pardoning shaming of voters came with chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas:
The President clearly believes that DOJ was overzealous in its prosecution of those involved on January 6. A number of DO — DOJ officials were hoping the President would not pardon those convicted of truly violent crimes especially against police. Take another look at these videos. Suspects hitting police officers with sticks, jabbing them with flag poles, using bear spray. In this video, you see a suspect using a cattle prod to shock officers. The sound of the electric shock is startling to hear. Now, all of these suspects, those still in prison, likely will be released immediately. Family members of injured police are expressing outrage. The brother of one of the officers who died of natural causes after a confrontation with the mob called the pardons a betrayal of decency.” One key question. How will the law enforcement community respond to a President that many of them see as pro-police?
Following a look ahead from senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, the first half-hour’s coverage (which would be followed by a second half-hour news brief and abridged Bruce in the second hour) came to an end with Stephanopoulos remarking to three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl that “it’s become a tradition for modern presidents to issue a series of executive orders on day one, but nothing matched the scope of what President Trump did yesterday.”
Karl said “his supporters” delivered when they promised “shock and awe,” especially considering Trump only “signed a single executive order” in 2017.
In 2025, however, he fretted “[n]othing” was “more breathtaking that that pardon and clemency for virtually every single human being involved in the attack on the Capitol on January 6.”
“George, with that action, he effectively erases the most far reaching federal criminal investigation in American history. It was a pardon — a series of pardons and clements — clemency actions that went even beyond what the advocates for those prisoners — those people in prison for attacking the Capitol expected. Every single person who attacked police officers with flag poles, baseball bats, 2x4’s. It is — it is absolute breathtaking,” he seethed.
Before moving onto Trump’s prospects of working with Congress, Stephanopoulos channeled CBS’s John Dickerson with a pot shot about Trump and the Constitution: “[T]he juxtaposition is pretty stunning. The President taking the oath to uphold the Constitution then pardoning those who were convicted of undermining the Constitution.”
Over on NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie pivoted from its own Rubio interview by smirking to Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker:
How interesting to see Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state, answering a question about these pardons by saying, I can't. It's foreign policy. This is domestic politics. However, when he talked about January 6 in the soundbite that just played, he put it in foreign policy terms, saying the world is watching.
Asked what “the ramifications are” for “members of the administration, particularly those that were there that day, that were victims,” Welker replied Rubo’s “put in a very complicated position” and that “this is really one of his least popular issues” with “[n]early two-thirds of Americans disagree[ing] with pardoning the January 6 defendants.”
To their credit, the two laid waste to the Biden family pardons (click “expand”):
GUTHRIE: Well, let's talk about politically unpopular because president Biden on his way out the door literally while the inauguration ceremony was going on announces he's pardoning members of his own family. I mean, first of all, he pardoned Hunter Biden, something he explicitly said he would not do. He didn’t — he went ahead and did it and then he did his own family members. So, this is another one of these situations where these pardons are — are extremely controversial, no matter who does them.
WELKER: Incredibly controversial, Savannah. And this move did get bipartisan criticism, by the way, Republicans, including president Trump, calling it disgraceful saying it is a sign that his family members are guilty. Former President Biden said, look, he did it to protect because President Trump talked so much about retribution on the campaign trail. Here’s what I think is notable. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy saying, “it is probably time for us to take a look at the way the pardon system is being used.” Watch that space, Savannah. Will there be a robust discussion moving forward about who can and cannot be eligible for a pardon? Really fascinating in the wake of yesterday's pardonpalooza that we saw.
GUTHRIE: Yeah, it was. It was a pardonpalooza.
To see the relevant ABC transcript from January 20, click here.
