A majority of voters oppose Donald Trump's plan to pardon hundreds of his supporters who were jailed for their role in the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a new Civiqs poll for Daily Kos.
Fifty-one percent of registered voters oppose Trump's plan to pardon the rioters on his first day in office—with a plurality (47%) of voters strongly opposed.
Opposition is strongest from Democrats (95%), Black voters (84%), Hispanic voters (58%), urban voters (70%), white college-educated voters (59%), and voters ages 18 to 34 (58%).
Whether a voter watches Fox News is also a good indicator of whether they support pardoning the rioters—a sign the right-wing propaganda network is making its viewers look upon the Jan. 6 criminals more favorably.
Voters who frequently watch Fox News overwhelmingly support pardoning the rioters, with 75% strongly supporting the pardons and 14% somewhat supporting the pardons. Meanwhile, 67% who don’t watch Fox News oppose pardoning the rioters, according to the survey.
According to NBC News, more than 1,251 people have either pleaded guilty or were convicted of charges related to their efforts to block the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of Joe Biden's 2020 Electoral College victory.
Trump campaigned on pardoning those rioters, some of whom were incarcerated for violently attacking law enforcement officers guarding the Capitol.
"I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can't say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control," Trump said during a May 2023 town hall hosted by CNN. "I would say it will be a large portion of them. … And it’ll be very early on."
Indeed, supporters of the insurrectionists popped bottles of champagne outside the federal jail in Washington, D.C., where many of the rioters were imprisoned on the night Trump was elected.
Trump confirmed in a Sunday interview with NBC News' Kirsten Welker that he is still considering those pardons.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said of pardoning Jan. 6 rioters. “They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
Trump, for his part, is familiar with corrupt pardons.
In his first term in office, Trump pardoned allies and people who heaped praise upon him, including right-wing conspiracy theorist Roger Stone, who obstructed the congressional investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling; Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman who had been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for a raft of financial crimes; and Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law.
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