Former NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund head Sherrilyn Ifill said Thursday on MSNBC’s “All In” that President Donald Trump is trying to build an army of “brownshirts” with pardons.
Ifill said, “We can take this all the way back to 2015 during Trump’s original campaign, when he said at his rallies, you know, punch him out, to people who are protesting, punch him out, and I’ll take care of your representation. I’ll pay for your lawyers. You know, this is something Trump has done, and it is because he wants to know that he has a kind of army, a kind of group of brownshirts who will support him, who will show fealty to him and show fealty to him to the point of violence.”
She continued, “This is an important moment. I think that we should not let go past very quickly the pardoning of all of the January 6th convicts, particularly those who assaulted police officers. We have been browbeaten by the Republican Party for years, who have set police officers above the law, who have said we cannot question their conduct, who have said they are heroes, who have said we cannot come against them, and to do so is somehow unpatriotic.”
Ifill added, “And here we have a president pardoning people who assaulted, beat, harmed and committed acts that resulted in the death of police officers trying to protect the Capitol. We should never let Trump forget that. I think he knows that this story is dangerous to him. and that is why you may have seen chris yesterday this plan to create their own January 6th committee. So the pardons aren’t enough. He has to also try to recreate the narrative.”
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