Former Trump senior adviser David Urban told CNN on Tuesday that John Bolton “should be protected,” after President Donald Trump terminated his former national security adviser’s Secret Service protection.
Reacting to the news on CNN’s The Source, Urban said, “Listen, I don’t know what the intelligence looks like. Obviously there was an intelligence threat analysis done. If there’s an active threat still on former ambassador Bolton’s life, I think he should have security. If it’s for the rest of his life, it should be the rest of his life.”
He continued:
If John Bolton did things in our nation’s defense that put his life at risk, then he should be defended by our nation for as long as it takes. Whether it’s President Trump, President Biden, future presidents, if you do things in defense of our nation as a public figure and a foreign government says, “We’re going to kill you,” and there’s an active threat, then I think we have an obligation to defend you. That’s why special operators have their faces blacked out.
Urban concluded, “I think John Bolton should be protected.”
Bolton revealed
on Tuesday that his Secret Service protection had been terminated following Trump’s inauguration as president.
“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service,” he wrote. “Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021.”
Bolton continued, “The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me. That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination. The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call.”
Trump defended
the decision during a press conference, telling reporters, “You can’t have that for life. You shouldn’t expect it for life.”
He argued, “You take a job, you want to do a job, we’re not gonna have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we? I thought he was a very dumb person, but I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me, they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger.”
Photo by: WILL OLIVER/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
The television ratings for President Donald Trump’s second inauguration are in, and they dropped 27% from President Joe Biden’s in 2021 and were nearly 20% lower than Trump’s first swearing-in in 2017.
Unsurprisingly, Fox News dominated the ratings for the festivities in the nation’s capital, beating out both their broadcast and cable competitors, and drawing in the second-highest ratings for Inauguration Day coverage in the network’s history, according to a Fox News press release. An average of 10.3 million viewers tuned into Fox News from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm ET Monday, including 2 million in the advertiser-coveted demographic of ages 25-54.
CNN averaged 1.7 million viewers during that same time period, MSNBC 848,000 viewers (the network has traditionally come in third for Inauguration Day coverage), ABC 4.7 million viewers, CBS 4.1 million viewers, and NBC 4.4 million viewers, according to early viewing numbers from Nielsen reported
by The Wrap’s Loree Seitz.
Altogether, Trump’s triumphant return to the White House drew an average total viewership for the day (tracking from 10:30 am to 7:00 pm ET) of 24.59 million viewers, reported The Wrap. That figure is based on combining viewer numbers from fifteen networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Merit Street Media, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, CNNe, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation, and PBS.
That number of 24.59 million viewers was 27% lower than Biden’s 2021 inauguration (33.76 million viewers tracked from 17 channels) was 19.75% lower than Trump’s first inauguration in 2021 (30.64 million viewers across 12 networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, Univision, Telemundo, CNBC, Fox Business Network, Galavision, and HLN).
The Wrap also analyzed the demographic breakdown of the viewers. Monday’s audience drew 1.43 million viewers ages 18-34, 4.67 million viewers ages 35-54, and 17.4 million viewers over 55, while the audience from 2021 was 2.85 million viewers ages 18-34, 8.21 million viewers ages 35-54, and 21 million viewers over 55.
Additional data from the early Nielsen numbers provided to Mediaite:
11:30 AM – 1 PM/ET
FNC: 10.3 million P2+; 2 million A25-54
CNN: 1.7 million P2+; 534,000 A25-54
MSNBC: 848,000 P2+; 104,000 A25-54
FBN: 282,000 P2+ ; 16,000 A25-54
ABC: 4.7 million P2+; 1.1 million A25-54
CBS: 4.1 million P2+; 907,000 A25-54
NBC: 4.4 million P2+; 1.2 million A25-54
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) criticized President Donald Trump over his pardons of criminals convicted of assaulting police officers during the Capitol riot.
Upon being sworn into office on Monday, Trump issued
pardons for over 1,500 defendants and prisoners stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021 riot. He also commuted the sentences of eight others. Some of those individuals were convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers.
Malliotakis appeared on Tuesday’s CNN News Central, where Boris Sanchez asked the lawmaker for her reaction.
“About four years ago, after being moved to a secure location by Capitol Police, you tweeted in part, quote, ‘Everyone who is responsible for this violence and lawlessness must stop. This is absolutely unacceptable and un-American,’” he said, reading her four-year-old tweet. “Do you think President Trump did the right thing by pardoning rioters who assaulted police officers?”
“Well, I do have an issue with those who assaulted police officers,” she responded. “And I think that those do need to serve the time. That is unacceptable. I’ve always sided with our police officers in saying that any assault or cop killers… should never be released. In fact, I very much disagree with what President Biden has done with actually commuting the sentences of multiple cop killers and people who killed FBI agents and service members as well.”
Malliotakis said that she believed some of the defendants had been treated unfairly, “But the people who assaulted our police officers do need to pay the consequence for that.”
“I do wonder what your message would be to those Capitol Hill police officers who were injured and assaulted defending fellow Republicans who now are defending these pardons?” Sanchez followed up.
“Well, look, I can only speak for myself,” she replied. “And certainly I stand with our Capitol Police and all our law enforcement. I’m very proud to be one of the few individuals here in Congress that actually in the past has received the endorsement of the Capitol Police union, and we have to support our law enforcement. We need to hold those who injure them and kill them accountable.”
I recognize that there is some disagreement about the preemptive pardons amidst the readership of the site, but let me join in the chorus of concern over cleaving to norms rather than addressing reality.
I give you the 46th and 47th presidents:
“Welcome home!” President Biden says to Donald Trump as he arrives at the White House pic.twitter.com/LscmofqTB6
I understand, to a point, the degree to which a man of Biden’s age and temperament felt the need to not be an asshole (please excuse the technical language) towards the incoming president. But this bit of norm-indulgence was not necessary and sent a terrible signal to the broader population.
I am not at all convinced that having Trump over for tea was necessary, let along appropriate. I am certain, however, that greeting him with a friendly “welcome home” was an absurd thing to do given that Biden, and then Harris, campaigned against Trump on the predicate that he represented a threat to democracy.
Treating him as normal only makes it seem (or, perhaps even confirms) that all of that was just campaign rhetoric.
I get that Biden has to legally and constitutionally afford Trump legal access to the various levers of power within the executive branch. However, treating him as utterly normal was not only not needed, but undercuts his own campaign in 2020, the alleged goals of his administration, and Harris’ 2024 campaign against Trump.
And one didn’t have to catch much of Trump’s various utterances yesterday to note that he is in no way extending the outgoing administration any niceties nor fake politeness.
Part of what concerns me about the Biden pardons is that they do not uphold, in my view, his own stated fealty to democracy, justice, and the rule of law. His treatment of Trump has likewise undercut those positions.
And, of course, this is the least of the concerns raised by yesterday.
CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten predicted that President Donald Trump will “end his honeymoon completely” with his immigration order aimed at ending birthright citizenship
for some children born in the United States.
On Monday, the president indicated he’d signed an executive order
that declares children born in the US to parents who are not lawful permanent residents or citizens would no longer be automatically granted citizenship at birth.
The order further mandates that federal agencies cease issuing or recognizing official documentation that affirms citizenship status for individuals who fall under these criteria. Significantly, the policy targets children born to both undocumented immigrants and those lawfully present in the country on temporary visas.
On Tuesday, Enten focused on the unpopularity of the move.
I think Donald Trump, by pushing policies like this, is just trying to eliminate his honeymoon period completely, because this is just not a popular policy and birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants illegally here.
The reporter pulled data on-screen to back his take.
Look at this, Just 35 percent support, the clear majority, 53 percent, oppose. And I’ve looked at multiple polls, looked at the question asked multiple different ways. If anything, this undersells the opposition by a little bit. If you don’t, in fact, mention four children born to immigrants here legally and just ask about ending birthright citizenship, the opposition shoots all the way up to about 70 percent.
So but this 53% is clearly indicative of a country that does not want to end birthright citizenship. Simply put, this is not a popular policy. And if Donald Trump pushes policies like this, his honeymoon period will squeeze and be even shorter than it was back in 2017.
Asked by the host Sara Snider about Trump’s tendency to change his mind on policies, Enten traced back over the president’s record on the subject.
So, look, they have asked this question numerous times. Remember, this is not some new policy idea, Republicans were pushing this during the anti-immigration era that was in the early 2010s. And look here, support ending birthright citizenship, in 2011, it was 35 percent. In 2015, it was 31 percent. In 2025, it was 35 percent. It is 35 percent.
You don’t really see consistency like this across many poll questions. But you see it here consistently. The percentage of Americans who support ending birthright citizenship is only about a third of the country. And it, simply put, has not moved. No matter which politicians get in, the 35 percent we see now is most likely going to be the 35 percent we see a month, two months, three months, four months, five months down the line.
Crunching the numbers further, Enten gave a partisan breakdown.
You might expect that Republicans, who are overwhelmingly supporting this now, the majority do support ending birthright citizenship, but it’s only 56 percent. It’s only 56 percent.
Donald Trump’s approval rating among Republicans, I assure you when the first poll comes out of his presidency will be much closer to 90 percent. So he’s losing about 30-35 percent of Republicans on this particular question. You’ll look at Democrats. It’s just 21 percent. You look at independents, it’s just 19 percent.
The bottom line is the base, a large chunk of the Republican base abandons Donald Trump on this question of supporting an end to birthright citizenship. And Democrats and independents, simply put, don’t like it. Trump would be much better off focusing on lowering taxes and cracking down on immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes. That is a much more popular policy support ending right? Ending birthright citizenship, simply put, is not popular.
CNN’s Kate Bedingfield blasted former President Joe Biden’s last minute pardons of family members as a “disappointing move” to go out on.
Bedingfield, who previously served as communications director in Biden’s White House, knocked her former boss’s pardons
of family members during an appearance on CNN This Morning
on Tuesday. Bedingfield said she would be “totally candid” and argued Biden’s pardons went against exactly the type of power he was criticizing President Donald Trump over. Bedingfield also served under Biden during former President Barack Obama’s administration, and she worked on his 2020 presidential campaign.
Biden preemptively pardoned his brother, James Biden; his sister-in-law, Sara Jones Biden; his sister, Valerie Biden Owens; his brother-in-law, John T. Owens; and his youngest brother, Francis Biden. These pardons followed him also pardoning
his son Hunter Biden as he awaiting sentencing on gun and tax charges.
The former president said the preemptive pardons were a response to attacks and corruption accusations from Republicans and Trump on him and his family.
“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” Biden explained in a statement. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”
Check out the CNN exchange below:
KASIE HUNT: “How do you feel about Biden pardoning his family members, especially on the way out in a preemptive way? And how much damage do you think he did? How much damage do you think Democrats think he did?”
BEDINGFIELD: It was a disappointing move. I was disappointed, and I think he has spoken so eloquently about the need to preserve the rule of law. As he was coming into office in 2020, he talked about the idea of Trump pardoning his family and said that it would send a bad message. And I think it’s hard to argue that it didn’t yesterday. I will be totally candid. I think it was disappointing. I also think you have to recognize that we are now in a Trump 2.0 era where Trump has been very clear that he intends to use the armed long arm of the government to go after his political enemies, and I can understand why Joe Biden might look at his family and say, I’m going to do everything in my power to protect them on the way out the door. I think as a human matter, I can understand that argument. I think politically, I don’t buy the argument that somehow what Biden did yesterday gives more leeway to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is going to come in and issue a blanket pardon for people who assaulted police officers in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It did not matter what Joe Biden did or did not do, that was going to happen. And that’s something that Donald Trump is going to own.
NYT
(“Trump Grants Sweeping Clemency to All Jan. 6 Rioters“):
President Donald J. Trump, in one of his first official acts, issued a sweeping grant of clemency on Monday to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, issuing pardons to most of the defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Mr. Trump’s moves amounted to an extraordinary reversal for rioters accused of both low-level, nonviolent offenses and for those who had assaulted police officers.
And they effectively erased years of efforts by federal investigators to seek accountability for the mob assault on the peaceful transfer of presidential power after Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. As part of his pardon order, Mr. Trump also directed the Justice Department to dismiss “all pending indictments” that remained against people facing charges for Jan. 6.
Sitting in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he hoped that many of the defendants could be released from prison as early as tonight.
“They’ve already been in jail for a long time,” he said. “These people have been destroyed.”
The pardons Mr. Trump issued — “full, complete and unconditional,” he wrote — will touch the lives of about 1,000 defendants accused of misdemeanors like disorderly conduct, breaching the Capitol’s restricted grounds and trespassing at the building. Many of these rioters have served only days, weeks or months in prison — if any time at all.
The pardons will also wipe the slate clean for violent offenders who went after the police on Jan. 6 with baseball bats, two-by-fours and bear spray and are serving prison terms, in some cases of more than a decade.
Moreover, Mr. Trump pardoned Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who was serving a 22-year prison term after being convicted at trial of seditious conspiracy — a crime that requires prosecutors to prove that a defendant used violent force against the government.
A representative for Mr. Tarrio said he had been released from a federal prison in Louisiana and was expected to return to Miami, his hometown, by Tuesday afternoon.
CNN
(“Trump commutes sentences of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders as he pardons over 1,000 January 6 US Capitol rioters“) adds:
The “full, complete and unconditional” pardons extend to people who were convicted of some of the worst crimes committed the day of the Capitol attack.
That group includes individuals like Julian Khater, who assaulted US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick and later pled guilty to assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon; Devlyn Thompson, who hit a police officer with a metal baton; and Robert Palmer, a Florida man who attacked police with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole.
More than 140 police officers were injured during the seven-hour siege, which also led directly and indirectly to the deaths of four Trump supporters in the mob and five police officers.
Late Monday night, two brothers convicted for their roles in the attack on the US Capitol were released from a DC jail, hours after Trump issued the sweeping set of pardons.
Andrew Valentin and Matthew Valentin, who both pleaded guilty in September to assaulting police and were each sentenced last week to two-and-a-half years in prison, walked out of the DC Central Detention Facility Monday night, according to Paul Ingrassia, who identified himself to reporters as the Trump White House’s liaison to the Justice Department.
“The first two January 6 defendants have been released,” Ingrassia told reporters gathered outside the jail. CNN previously reported that Matthew Valentin had tried to tear a baton from a police officer on January 6, and Andrew Valentin threw a chair at a police line.
[…]
About 55% of January 6 prosecutions are misdemeanor cases, with charges like disorderly conduct or trespassing, according to Justice Department data. For those convicted, the vast majority were sentenced to probation or a few months in prison and were already released.
Some defendants are elderly people who got caught up in the frenzy. Others went inside the Capitol for a handful of minutes but never attacked anyone or vandalized anything. Most have no criminal record. A large chunk of the people in the mob said they never intended to infiltrate the Capitol, let alone disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results. Some believe they were waved into the building by police.
This is shameful.
Once the dust settled on January 6, I began arguing that, rather than a simple insurrection—my initial instinct after watching the horror unfold on television and, indeed, that of Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans—it was a series of overlapping events. There was indeed a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election, organized and instigated by white nationalist groups, with the groundwork laid by Trump and others on his team. But there were people who simply got caught up in a mob and others still, who were essentially tourists.
I’ve argued for treating these groups differently in terms of how they were prosecuted and punished. As best I can tell, that mostly happened. As is inevitable in a justice system run by humans, some judges and prosecutors treated like offenses more harshly than others.
To the extent Trump sees those who arrived in DC to attend his rally and then got caught up in the adrenaline as allies who have been prosecuted in a politically-motivated manner, I can at least see an argument for pardoning them so that they can resume productive lives without the stain of a felony conviction.
But it is beyond outrageous for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to pardon men who planned a violent insurrection. It is an insult to the Capitol Police officers who were killed and injured as a direct result of their plot. To say nothing of the Members of Congress who feared for their lives as an angry mob came in to stop them from executing their sworn duty.
Alas, Trump gave every indication that he would do this On Day One. And so here we are.
CNN anchor Kasie Hunt called BS when someone said maybe President Donald Trump will “move on” from January 6 after his blanket pardons, saying “I’ll believe it when I see it!”
The media spent most of Monday covering every moment of Trump’s inauguration
to a second term, but one event overshadowed nearly everything else that came before and after it — Trump’s pardons and commutations
for the January 6 defendants, including those who committed violence against police.
The move drew widespread
and bipartisan condemnation, although many equated Trump’s move with now-former President Joe Biden’spreemptive pardons
even as they acknowledged they were in response to threats from Trump.
On Tuesday’s edition
of CNN This Morning
, Hunt’s regulars took turns giving their takes, with the anchor interjecting occasionally. When GOP analyst Brad Todd said he hoped the pardons got it all out of Trump’s “system,” Hunt was skeptical:
KATE BEDINGFIELD: It clearly puts a lot of Republicans who have said that you should not give a pardon to somebody who assaulted a police officer.
KASIE HUNT: Police officers who, by the way, were protecting people like Mike Johnson that day.
KATE BEDINGFIELD: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I also I actually I think Trump is is misreading what swept him into office here.
And the fact that he’s not spending he didn’t spend his first day talking about what he’s going to do to lower prices or highlighting the executive orders that he signed that he claims are going to lower prices.
I think his base wanted to see what he did yesterday. I think that actually the vast majority of people who voted for him were uncomfortable with January 6th, but said, I think the different direction he’s going to take the country and the economy is what matters.
And I think he’s misreading and I actually think that’s going to be a political vulnerability for him moving forward.
BRAD TODD: January 2021 has always been an Achilles heel for Donald Trump and it’s always held him back from his better days talking about what he wanted to do for the American people.
I think a lot of Republicans are hoping that now this is out of his system right now. He can turn the page from the 2020 election. He can move forward.
This is his-+- he’s he’s used all his power to put to put an end to the book. And so now let’s see if he can move on.
KASIE HUNT: I’ll believe it when I see it!
TARA PALMERI: I think it’s interesting too what you brought up about the fact that he could have pardoned himself in advance. He talked about it. He thought about it back in 2020, but I think he didn’t have that political power. He can’t –he left on such a low note, but he has such a strong mandate right now. I think he feels like he is invincible and that’s why he took that step.
But I think Donald Trump, even he understands that he won’t have that power in a few months.
KASIE HUNT: Jonah I want to give you the last word.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Yeah, look, I mean, Brad, I you know, I love you man. (LAUGHTER).
This, this, this this eternal dream is losing in the football. The eternal dream is Waiting for Godot. Like desire to see Trump pivot, to be a responsible. You know, today he is now president for everybody moment. It hasn’t happened. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
This is an Aesopian thing. His nature is his nature. And he will he craves he would much rather positive attention than negative attention, but he’ll take negative attention over no attention any day.
So he will create many, many, many more moments that create bowel-stewing panic for Republican candidates, trying to figure out what to say.
