The rallies start with a recording of January 6 prisoners singing the national anthem. Campaign staff hand out pre-made “Too Big to Rig” signs to supporters. When the candidate takes the stage, he calls the rioters “people who love our country” and “hostages unfairly imprisoned for long periods of time.”
There is nothing subtle about how central Donald Trump has made January 6, 2021, to his campaign. More than just continuing to feed denialism and conspiracies about the 2020 election, he is constantly distorting the reality of what happened that day, preaching vindication to his base of voters.
In ways big and small – but often overlooked because they have become so commonplace at his events – the former president glosses over the violence. He promises pardons for the people who committed it.
On this, Trump and President Joe Biden agree: January 6 itself is a central issue of the 2024 campaign and will be even if Trump’s trials on related indictments get delayed past Election Day.
It’s Biden’s campaign aides who have been surprised how much that’s true.
“People know what happened on January 6,” said Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s closest advisers. “I think most of the country is going to say, ‘We don’t embrace political violence. We do embrace democracy. We do embrace the rule of law. We’re not interested in pardoning people who ransacked the Capitol, and we’re going to have a real problem supporting someone who embraces all that.’”
Though Donilon and a few others — including Vice President Kamala Harris, in private conversations to CNN — had been adamant for three years that January 6 would continue reverberating, Biden aides use words like “stunning” to describe the way Trump has not just kept January 6 present, but burrowed…
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