Republican National Committee describes Jan. 6 riots as “legitimate political discourse”

Update (Feb 4, 2022): Days after former President Donald Trump signaled that he may pardon Capitol rioters if he is elected president in 2024, the Republican National Committee described the riots as “legitimate political discourse.” Those words are included in a resolution to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for participating in the House committee investigating the riots. The resolution was approved at a committee meeting in Salt Lake City Friday.

“Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in a legitimate political discourse,” the resolution says, according to this tweet from NBC news reporter Sahil Kapur. “They are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes.”

The censuring of Cheney and Kinzinger comes on the same day former Vice President Mike Pence fired back at a claim former President Trump made that “Pence did have the right to change the outcome” of the 2020 election.

“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election,” former Vice President Pence said Friday at a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida. “Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”

Original Story (Jan. 31, 2022): At an event Saturday night, former President Donald Trump indicated that if he is elected to a second term in office, he would pardon rioters who took part in last January’s Capitol riots. The comments, and the event as a whole, marked the latest in a series of hints pointing to the former president running in 2024.

“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly,” Trump said at the event. “What that un-select committee is doing and what the people are doing that are running those prisons…it’s a disgrace.”

Also at the event, Trump promised to ban Critical Race Theory “…in our classrooms… our military… from our workplaces, and… from our federal, state and local governments.” He also railed on President Joe Biden’s handling on the growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

“Biden’s incompetence is putting America at risk as everyone knows,” Trump said. “What Putin and Russia are doing with Ukraine would never, ever, not even possible have happened if I was president.”

Trump also spent his weekend weighing in on the current push in Congress modify the Electoral Count Act. Specifically, Congress is looking to make it more clear that the vice president’s role in certifying election results is purely ceremonial. The move comes after Trump requested Vice President Mike Pence overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?” Trump said in his statement, according to this tweet from Jan. 6 House committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). “Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”