I recently had an online discussion with someone who believes that Trump is an utter failure and a cautionary tale because he "betrayed his supporters" by not pardoning the January 6 prisoners.
He had written the following:
Donald Trump squandered his shot. Now he’s paying for his failure. Many of the people who put their faith in him already are.
That last point is why Trump has proven unfit to lead and why no rational person should support him, even if he somehow makes it out of this mess he made. Trump has insufficient loyalty to his followers. That is not a momentary lapse of judgment. It is a persistent character flaw. When the chips are down, he will abandon his people again.
Barring some road to Damascus moment, that is. But even if Trump has a profound change of heart, he will need to prove it with concrete results before anyone should consider trusting him again.
Like all tragedies, Trump’s negative example can be an occasion for greater good. Otherwise smart, well-meaning people in positions of influence can take Trump’s removal from the board as a valuable lesson. There is no voting our way out of this – not with the electoral system totally compromised. Nor do we need a Boomer TV daddy to swoop in and save us.
In the discussion between him and me that followed, he wrote this as a response to one of my comments:
As for Trump’s loyalty, tell that to the hundreds of his supporters imprisoned in his name for January 6. He could have pardoned them before leaving office but left them to rot. Instead, he released thousands of black felons onto the streets.
I responded:
Pardoning them would have removed even the limited Republican Congressional and Senate support that he had during his impeachment trial, which was already barely enough to prevent him from being convicted. He would have been convicted in his impeachment and sent to jail for inciting an insurrection. The intelligence agencies would have tracked down thousands of other Trump supporters who were at the January 6 rally (using cell phone data) to arrest in retaliation for the ones that would have been pardoned. It would have been a suicide move; sometimes it’s necessary to live to fight another day.
Him:
That’s the problem with parroting talking points you hear online without stopping to think first. If you had, you’d have seen how the argument negates itself.
If a system is corrupt enough to tell the President “We’re illegally imprisoning and torturing these 300 people, and if you pardon them, we’ll imprison you and thousands more,” it is too corrupt to be bargained with. There are no checks to prevent it from prosecuting the President and his followers anyway.
Which is what we are seeing happen now. The FBI raided an ex-president’s home. Then they stopped a sitting congressman in transit and seized his phone. Leftist influencers are now calling for ordinary Trump voters to be arrested and crushed and their children orphaned. Who’s going to stop them? The same Republicans who threatened to convict Trump if he’d pardoned those same people?
The day the system proved itself illegitimate was the day Trump should have stood and fought (peacefully). Running to fight another day turned into just running. Now he’ll be jailed anyway. And so will many of his supporters.
Defending him now requires the same rationalization battered wives use to justify their abuse. It serves no one.
Another person in a follow-up discussion wrote this;
I can only speak for myself, but that is when he lost me. The Qult, as you call it, can torture language and logic all they want to rationalize this, but it’s betrayal, pure and simple. No good and decent man would have done this in the face of what Trump stood against.
If he was smart enough to be 10 steps ahead of the Deep State, or play the imaginary 4D chess at master level, as the Qultists frequently claim, he would have easily been able to predict the results of this betrayal.
What are your thoughts on this point of view?
Not a popular opinion around these parts, but I think it's a valid criticism and, when coupled with President Trump's endorsement of the vaccine, it opens up the possibility that Q and Trump are not necessarily on the same side.
That said, I think the jury's still out - this is wartime after all. It would be foolish to believe that everything is as it seems. Believing wholeheartedly that Trump is the second coming of Christ, or believing wholeheartedly that he's "unfit to lead" are both biased conclusions that are drawn from incomplete information.
I’m not sure how you can criticize a president for not pardoning people who weren’t even in jail yet. Most if not all people who are still in jail because of January 6, we’re not arrested until after he was out of office. So really the whole thought process is a no go.
That is a good point and it's why I don't criticize Trump for not pardoning J6 prisoners. I find it strange, however, how much marketing work was done for this particular rally - was the speech itself any more significant than most of Trump's speeches? I don't think so. It was about as good as they usually are.
So why the marketing? "January 6th in D.C. - be there, will be wild!"
Why were posts constantly pinned to the top of The Donald endorsing this event? Example: https://web.archive.org/web/20201230003946/https://thedonald.win/
"TRUMP TWEET. DADDY SAYS BE IN DC ON JAN. 6TH"
The President told the protestors to "go home, we must have peace." That's fine, but it suggests that Trump has a legal solution to the incredible turmoil our country faces. I choose to have faith in him and in Q--the Mar-a-Lago raid could very well be the storm we've been waiting for--but it's been 2 years since the election was stolen, J6 prisoners still rotting away behind bars, no significant arrests of globalist politicians - I don't blame anyone for losing faith in Trump under these circumstances, these are hard times with a LOT of political subterfuge.
My point is, patriots who are losing patience are not necessarily deepstate agents, and I think it's wrong to throw them under the bus (or kneejerk downvote posts as is happening here - even though I still support Trump) instead of engaging with them intellectually.
I think part of the issue, is I was actually at the January 6 event. I see the event through my own experience, I know what happened, I was there, and it wasn’t what the media or anybody else is making it out to be.
Yes there were some bad actors, antifa, BLM, and the FBI. They did stir up some trouble, and what they really wanted was for us to burn the place to the ground. But that didn’t happen. also I think the Ashli Babbitt shooting was supposed to trigger us to create a more realistic looking invasion.
The fact of the matter is this, everybody that was on the outside of that building had no idea what was happening on the inside. People on the outside we’re singing songs, being patriotic, singing Christian songs, praying, preaching, and just overall gathering together and talking amongst one another.
It was one of the most high energy, and enjoyable days of my entire life. The entire event from Trump speaking from the White House, and going to the capital, was just amazing.
You didn’t have to climb a rope to get onto the second level, you just had to have enough of a brain to walk around to the other side of the building and see that they had stairs there. I’m a 58-year-old woman, I went alone, and at no time did I ever feel unsafe.
I actually brought a kick scooter with me, and I rode it all over that area. I tucked it up underneath one of the security trailers at the Capitol, and walked around for hours, taking pictures, talking to people, and taking videos. When I was done my scooter was exactly where I left it.
I went back to my hotel room before 5 PM because there was going to be a curfew that night. I will never forget that day, and I posted videos, pictures, on Facebook, even picture of myself here & on the Donald - I have never heard one word from anybody in law-enforcement or the FBI.
I don’t feel that I was led there by Donald Trump per se, I went there to be part of a movement. A group of people that felt like the election was stolen. We all came in one accord, and some people got caught up in some bad things. And I do feel bad for them.
But I don’t feel Donald Trump is responsible for anything that happened that day. Clearly there was a planned event by the deep state, that was supposed to go really really wrong. But it didn’t work out the way they wanted it to. It was a big dud! There were too many people there that were trying to keep antifa and others from breaking windows, and causing problems. Because I witnessed it myself.
The problem is that Trump supporters are not the radical, Nazi, deplorable, hotheaded, people that they make us out to be. That’s where they went wrong. They were more people trying to calm things down, then there were trying to stir things up.
I don’t down vote people here for having different opinions than mine, unless they are straight up being assholes. Then they get an asshole down vote from me, but not because they think differently than me. Because that does happen sometimes.
Trump is not perfect, and he’s made his mistakes, and I’m glad that that’s happened. He’s human! He’s not run by the deep state, and he has a navigate the constant attacks on his life. I think he is doing the best he can, and I am grateful for that.
Thank you for the thoughtful response!
Yes, I think a lot of people (myself included) have a hard time knowing what to believe as far as J6 is concerned. So much deepstate propaganda, not to mention questions regarding the marketing leading up to the event. I was not in attendance.
I'm glad it was a positive experience for you, and especially glad you didn't run into any issues with the law. It would be great if the narrative that Trump supporters were arrested was just entirely fabricated - maybe, who knows anymore!
This is my take on President Trump as well, I'm just not keen on people attacking other (potentially genuinely patriotic) people who hold different views on the president. Anything other than rabid TDS should be confronted with compassion, I think.