The 117th Congress holds a joint session to certify the Presidential election results, on January 06 in Washington, DC.

The Washington Post

January 6th sentencing 

US District Court of District of Columbia

Capitol Riot Sentencing

handout

Capitol Riot Arrest Illinois

J6 rioter arrested

Image from Criminal Complaint and Arrest Warrant

Pro-Trump Protests get Violent over Electoral College Certification

Contributor

POOL

other

Capitol Riot Trial

 Kyle Fitzsimons

Image from Complaint & Statement of Facts filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather in Washington

REUTERS

 Paul Lovley and Joseph Brody in J6 riot

 DOJ Statement of Facts charging documents

from Criminal Complaint filed with the US District Court for the District of Columbia

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

In photos: The scene in Houston after severe storms killed at least 7 people

Civilians flee new Russian attacks on Ukraine border

She finished chemo then got a medical degree: ‘The dream is real now’

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Russia shows resilience. There is more to do for Ukraine.

Trump promises tax cuts and fewer rules. CEOs shouldn’t fall for it.

Tariffs against China hamstring the transition to a clean energy future

Joey Gallo returns, but Nats endure another quiet offensive night

Bryce Harper, Joey Gallo and a bond forged by baseball since they were kids

A taco will always be a taco — no matter what we call it

Carolyn Hax: Is it weird to ask other people to care about you?

Ask Amy: Can’t a single woman eat alone without interruption?

Miss Manners: Miss Manners: Gag gift falls flat

At campus protests, ‘DO NOT TALK TO THE MEDIA’!

Trump’s lawyer charges Michael Cohen lied to jury

CNN gets a presidential debate — and a much-needed win

Mexican taquería’s new Michelin star puts street eats on par with gourmet food

Police believe a U.S. rapist killed several women in Canada

With its energy network nearly destroyed, Ukraine already fears the winter

How Jim Jordan tried to connect the dots on Biden’s $8 million book deal

‘Never Trump?’ ‘Never Biden’ voters might loom larger.

Ukraine gamble pays off: Republicans face little backlash in primaries

Blue Origin to fly again as space tourism struggles to get off the ground

These ISIS news anchors are AI fakes. Their propaganda is real.

Boeing delays spaceflight again as it continues to struggle with leak

Biden’s false claim that inflation was 9 percent when he took office

Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

Cruise ships to return to Baltimore two months after bridge collapse 

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

Trump

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Victor J. Blue

NEW YORK — Presumptive Republican presidential nominee <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> compared the current wave of encampments and civil disobedience on college campuses to the deadly riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a>, 2021.

He suggested Tuesday to reporters that students protesting Israel’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">war in Gaza</a> should face punishments similar to those meted out to his supporters who were prosecuted in the Jan. 6 attack. And in a separate interview, he expanded a pledge to pardon Jan. 6 defendants by saying he would consider clemency for all of them.

Trump addressed the campus protests while speaking to reporters in the hall outside the courtroom here where he is standing trial on charges of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme before the 2016 election. He and other Republicans have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/29/gaza-college-campus-protests-republicans-attack-biden-chaos/" target=_blank>seized on the campus unrest</a> to exploit fissures within the Democratic coalition over Israel’s war in Gaza and portray <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> as losing control of the situation.

On campuses across the country, students and other demonstrators have set up tent encampments, barricaded themselves in buildings and defied police orders, leading to arrests and some police use of tear gas. No deaths have been reported.

By contrast, many Trump supporters on Jan. 6 violently assaulted police officers and ransacked the Capitol, leading to five deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Trump, though, drew a blanket equivalency, arguing that college protesters should face consequences akin to the more than 1,000 prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters. He added that he doubted that would happen, expanding on his allegations of unfairness in the legal system, which are core to his defense in this trial and the three other criminal cases against him.

“I wonder if what’s going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly,” Trump said, exaggerating the toll of the campus protests and using a shorthand term for Jan. 6 that was popularized by defendants’ lawyers and families in the MAGA movement.

“I wonder if that’s going to be the same kind of treatment they gave J6,” Trump said. “Let’s see how that all works out. I think I can give you the answer right now. And that’s why people have lost faith in our court system.”

The Biden campaign criticized Trump’s remarks.

“In his own words, he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one,’ use the military against the American people, punish those who stand against him, condone violence done on his behalf, and put his own revenge and retribution ahead of what is best for America,” said Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson James Singer. “Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the Constitution and a threat to our democracy.”

In his remarks Tuesday, Trump also repeated a false comparison between the campus protests and the 2017 march in Charlottesville by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, one of whom killed a counterprotester with his car.

“Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you’re looking at now,” Trump said. At the time, Trump defended the marchers as including “very fine people on both sides.” On Tuesday, he insisted that the remark had been <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/" target=_blank>taken out of context</a>: “When you extend the statement, it’s a big hoax, what they say was said.”

Trump made the comments on the same day Time Magazine published an <a href="https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/" target=_blank>interview</a> in which he expanded his repeated pledge to pardon Jan. 6 defendants by saying he would consider pardoning all of them. “Yes, absolutely,” Trump said in the interview.

Trump praised the interview to reporters on Tuesday. “They did a cover story, which is very nice,” he said. “And it’s actually at least 60 percent correct, which is about all I can ask for.”

As Trump walked away to enter the courtroom, he did not answer a reporter’s question about whether he would pardon the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, violent extremist groups whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy for helping to foment the Capitol riot. A small group of Proud Boys showed up at a Trump rally in North Carolina this month, and the campaign refused to denounce them.

In the Time interview, Trump again declined to rule out political violence in response to electoral defeat. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he said. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.”

Sidney Award, Sidney Hillman Foundation, 2018

Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, National Press Club, 2019

Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, honorable mention, 2019

 Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting, finalist, 2022

Finish What We Started

Isaac Arnsdorf is a national political reporter for The Washington Post who covers former president Donald Trump, the “Make America Great Again” political movement and the Republican Party. 

Isaac Arnsdorf

Trump compares campus protests to deadly Jan. 6 attack, broadens offer to pardon Capitol rioters

the-washington-post

for The Washington Post

Foreign Policy

Intelligence

Justice

Military

Balance of Power Pair

U.S. House Aggregate

U.S. Senate Aggregate

National Security

washpost

prism://prism.query/site,/national-security&limit=20

Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

The Washington Post's coverage of national security issues, including the military, intelligence, justice, and foreign policy.

prism://prism.query/site,/national-security/justice&limit=20

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/white-house&limit=20

White House

Latest news and coverage of the White House.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Politics

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix&limit=6

Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.

D.C., Md. & Va.

The Washington Post offers breaking local news, weather and traffic information for the DC, Maryland and Virginia metro areas, plus information about school districts, crime, government, religion, the lottery,restaurant reviews and obituaries.