"Beyond the effect the pardons and commutations will have on the lives of those who received them, they also served Mr. Trump’s mission of rewriting the history of Jan. 6."

"Throughout his presidential campaign and after he won the election, he has tried repeatedly to play down the violent nature of the Capitol attack and reframe it, falsely, as a 'day of love.'... As a legal matter, the pardons and commutations effectively unwound the largest single criminal inquiry the Justice Department has undertaken in its 155-year history. They wiped away all of the charges that had already been brought and the sentences already handed down while also stopping any new cases from moving forward. Starting virtually from the moment the Capitol was breached, investigators spent more than four years obtaining warrants for thousands of cellphones and Google accounts, scrolling through tens of thousands of hours of police body-camera and surveillance camera footage, and running down hundreds of thousands of tips from ordinary citizens.... Mr. Trump appears to have decided to grant an expansive form of clemency relatively recently and after a debate among his advisers.... A few weeks ago, Vice President JD Vance said... 'If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,' Mr. Vance said, but... Mr. Vance’s comments elicited almost immediate outrage among many of the rioters... ... Philip Anderson, who was accused of taking part in a violent scrum in a tunnel outside the Capitol, wrote on social media. 'All J6 defendants need to be saved.'..."

From "Trump Grants Sweeping Clemency to All Jan. 6 Rioters/The extraordinary pardons and commutations extended to those who committed both violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy" (NYT).

The Biden administration went big and then Trump went big. Biden could have shown mercy and aimed to bring Americans together, but he chose to be as punitive as possible. And this is after so much tolerance and forgiveness was shown to the Black Lives Matter rioters, to those crossing the border illegally, and to his political cronies and family matters. In that light, I have nothing negative to say about Trump's sweeping magnanimity.

Biden tried to make it clear to Trump that there was no need for him "go back and try to settle scores."

From Joe Biden's interview with Susan Page of USA Today:

PAGE: Some of your supporters have encouraged you to issue preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci, who Trump has threatened to target. Will you do that?

BIDEN: ... I was very straightforward with Trump when he got elected.... I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores.

PAGE: And did he give you an answer on what he was going to do?

BIDEN: Well, he didn't. But he didn't say, "No, I'm going to..." You know. He didn't reinforce it. He just basically listened....

So Biden failed to extract anything from Trump, and Trump was poker faced.

Tomorrow is January 6th, and we're seeing efforts to frame the occasion.

I'm seeing this at Politico: "Donald Trump’s quiet Jan. 6/Monday’s certification of Trump’s victory will be the antithesis of the carnage at the Capitol four years ago." Oh! The first part of the headline changed while I was in the middle of writing this post. It's now "Donald Trump is about to get the Jan. 6 that he denied Joe Biden." Excerpt:

It’s the utter antithesis of the carnage unleashed four years ago, under clear blue skies, by thousands of Trump supporters, goaded by lies about a stolen election. Hundreds of them bludgeoned police officers guarding the Capitol as the mob fought to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president.

I asked Grok if that last sentence was factually correct and it said that the "essence" is "supported by substantial evidence" but "the precise quantification of 'hundreds' as attackers specifically 'bludgeoning' officers might be an oversimplification or exaggeration of the exact actions...."

Over at The New York Times, there's: "'A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6/The president-elect and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack — spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom to their ultimate political gain." Excerpt:

Liz Cheney looks so uncomfortable receiving this medal from President Biden.

I like the way he gives it to her, then pulls it away, and she lets him and waits for him to get around to handing it back. What is she thinking? Who can know? Perhaps: Is this instead of a pardon or are you coming through with that pardon too?

I presume that everyone can see that a pardon for Liz Cheney — whom Trump said "should go to jail" — would benefit Trump. It must be hard to decide whether (over)protecting Cheney is important enough to be worth forgoing depriving Trump of that benefit.