Supporting the pardoning of prisoners who carried out violent acts against police officers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is “despicable,” Tara Setmayer, activist and CEO and co-founder of The Seneca Project told MSNBC’s Katie Phang Saturday.
“I’ve become friends with some of the officers who spoke out about what happened to them on January 6th,” Setmayer said. “And every American who sits there and tries to make the excuse that this election was about the price of eggs for them, and they try to completely ignore what Donald Trump promised he would do, and the fact that he called those traitors, sobs, hostages and patriots, how dare he?”
“It spits on the honorable service of every person who wears uniform and swears an oath to protect this country. As a law enforcement officer, particularly the ones who literally put their bodies in harm’s way to protect those people, despite the fact that they would betray everything that they claim to stand for — it is despicable,” Setmayer added.
The pardons are the responsibility of “everyone who voted for Donald Trump” and of “every Republican who let Donald Trump get away with what happened on January 6th so that he could come back to power,” she continued. The president’s supporters “knew exactly what you were doing when you enabled Donald Trump.”
“How do they explain to their kids what they stand for?” she also asked. “ecause it sure as hell isn’t law and order. And it sure sure as hell isn’t patriotism because there’s nothing patriotic about pardoning people who tried to violently overthrow our government and beat the hell out of cops and almost kill them.”
Setmayer isn’t alone in her condemnation of the pardons. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow condemned Trump’s actions and the silence of Republican leaders on her show Tuesday night.
“The stomach-churning self-loathing that all those senators felt today, the shame and embarrassment that they felt today as they were asked and asked and asked again about the president of their party springing 211 people who were actively incarcerated in federal prison, mostly for acts of violence against police officers while they were taking part in a violent attack on the U.S. Congress from which some of these same senators had to run for their lives,” she said.
“The feeling they are having, that disgusting feeling of having to swallow this and try to come up with some way to try to stop talking about it because hey can’t say anything about it that doesn’t disgust them and isn’t viscerally wrong. That sickening feeling, maybe that is what will save the country or at least slow its descent.”
Trump issued pardons for nearly 1,500 people on his first day in office Monday. He also commuted the sentences of 14 people who were charged in connection to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including people associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
Watch the clip from Katie Phang and Tara Setmayer in the video above.
