Why Trump’s weird song with Jan. 6 rioters (sort of) matters

We’ve grown accustomed to seeing Donald Trump sympathize with Jan. 6 rioters, as The Washington Post reported, the former president’s support for those who joined a mob and attacked the U.S. Capitol has reached a new level: He’s collaborated on a song with a group of Jan. 6 inmates.

According to Forbes, which broke the story, Trump recorded his part of the track at Mar-a-Lago last month, while the inmates sang over a jailhouse phone. A HuffPost report added, “On YouTube, Trump is credited as the composer of the track.”

For now, I’ll put aside the temptation to play music critic and instead focus on the degree to which the Republican has come full circle when it comes to the rioters.

Revisiting our coverage from several months ago, during the Jan. 6 attack, the then-president sat on his hands and ignored calls to intervene. More than three hours after the violence began, Trump released a video urging his mob of radicalized followers to disperse.

But even then, the Republican made clear that he and the rioters were on the same side. In the video he released at the time, Trump told his supporters that there had been “an election that was stolen from us.” He added, “We love you. You’re very special.”

It was soon after when the then-president started to realize that this, at least at the time, was a politically untenable position: His own Cabinet had begun conversations about removing Trump from office by way of the 25th Amendment. He and his team decided he needed “cover” to remain in the White House.

And so, Trump shifted his message: The then-president said on Jan. 7, “Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.” He went on to describe the riot as a “heinous attack.”

Reading from a prepared text, Trump added: “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. ... To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: You will pay.”

Five days later, the Republican condemned the “mob [that] stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government.” On the final full day of his term, again reading from a script, Trump added: “All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated.”

In the months that followed, however, Trump struggled to keep up the pretense that he almost certainly never believed in the first place. By May 2021, the former president was suggesting the rioters were victims. He eventually started describing them as “patriots.” Around the same time, the former president first broached the subject of extending pardons to convicted radicals, which was soon followed by vows of financial support.

And now, Trump has reached a new extreme, releasing a song with Jan. 6 inmates.

The multistep process has not only brought Trump back to the beginning, he has actually gone further than ever before.

1. Trump “loved” the rioters.
2. Trump then condemned the rioters’ “heinous attack.”
3. Trump then said the rioters may not have been so bad after all.
4. Trump then said the rioters are innocent “patriots” and their attack “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”
5. Trump now wants to give them pardons, apologies, financial support, and a musical platform.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss recently wondered about what future Americans might say about Jan. 6, and the degree to which the answer depends on whether the United States is a democracy or an autocracy. “If the latter,” Beschloss wrote, “the nation’s authoritarian leaders might celebrate January 6 as one of great days in U.S. history.”

One former president apparently doesn’t need to wait for the future to draw such a conclusion.

This post revises our related earlier coverage.