The blame-dodging begins as even Trump's own aides claim to be 'surprised' by his release of violent felons

This NBC story is absolute horseshit and you shouldn't believe a word of it. We're all going to need to remember the first rule of American political journalism, every day for the next godknowshowmany years: American political reporters only report what figures in power want reported. The first Trump administration used this quirk of the press to tremendous advantage. All they had to do is offer some anonymous chump who would say that the administration was quite confident the sky was green, and they could be certain that reporters would scramble to report that well golly the administration must think that because otherwise this anonymous serial liar who we all recognize to be a serial liar wouldn't have said it.

The only news you'll find in a story premised on anonymous sources is what each source wants to see reported. There's not a damn bit of it you can presume to be true.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon virtually every person charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was made at the last minute as the inauguration approached — and it surprised some of his supporters and aides. 

I mean sure, in the broadest sense I'm sure you can find "some" surprised figures in both camps. That's not news. Who cares.

“He is who he is,” a person who worked on Trump’s transition team told NBC News. “Expectations are sometimes set as best as can be expected, and sometimes they change quickly.”

Well, that was almost honest. This guy is incapable of sticking to a principle or decision for any longer your average television segment is the message implied. Also implied is the "don't blame any of us, just because we tied ourselves to a violence-peddling seditionist, helped him win, are helping him commit these acts we aren't willing to put our own names to, and must now answer press questions about each new oozing wound to the nation."

The pardons surprised many in large part because Trump and Vice President JD Vance had signaled recently that the president would take a more surgical approach.

Yeah, well, they're liars. They lie like they breathe, that's their whole schtick. They also said there was no room for "Project 2025" in their administration before announcing that the authoritarian-minded theocracy-backing lunatic in charge of it was being appointed to a key position. So all we've established here is that there's a collection of anonymous, unnamed and possibly imaginary people who got "surprised" because they're incurable chucklefucks.

Oh wait, we're getting to the good part.

Vance was more direct in a Jan. 12 interview on “Fox News Sunday,” saying, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” On Tuesday, Vance's press secretary Taylor Van Kirk said the case-by-case basis that Trump and Vance had talked about “meant there was always going to be a large degree of gray area” in how the pardons were executed.

Go on.

Once Trump’s decision was made for “leniency,” one of the transition officials told NBC News, the entire nascent administration, including Vance, quickly got on the same page. Behind the scenes, Vance pushed for broad pardons and commutations, another person familiar with his role said.

“Everyone has been clear that we were looking at all the cases and the ultimate decision, which the Vice President ended up being a driving force behind, was more encompassing action,” the second transition official wrote to NBC News. “The President ended up airing on leniency given how political and broken the process was.”

Oh wow, so in one paragraph Vance is publicly staking himself to the position that violent copkillers (beating someone until they have two strokes and die the next day counts as killing them and everyone who isn't a fascist megatool knows it) should remain in jail, and a few paragraphs later Vance is also the "driving force" behind pardoning the whole murderous lot of them, driving The Criminal to take the most extreme position.

What? Huh? What are we doing here?

The most charitable interpretation is that Vance, known worldwide for his toadying abilities and willingness to flip core beliefs for a dollar and some chewed gum, didn't last a week before he flopped and insisted that Well Actually violent felons should of course be pardoned once he understood that the head felon super wanted it to happen. He then spent whatever small capital he still has to make damn sure the violent felons got released, no questions asked, in a futile attempt to get slightly farther up Trump's rear end than Elon Musk is. Sure, whatever.

The other possibility is that both these anonymous sedition backers are spinning our reporters like tops—both versions are equally likely. There's nothing here to suggest that anonymous members of a team infamous for truly vivid lying are on the up-and-up, except that the transparent incoherence of the story does indeed sort of sound like how all of these coup-positive Constitution-negative bumbling asshole-funded quarterwits spend their days. Touché.

What I want to focus on is this, though: The people closest to Trump, not the lobbyists and advisers whose entire living depends on drumming up outrage cycles with their names attached but the people actually working in the White House with him, are already playing the past Trump administration's favorite game.

Oh? Donald did a transparently corrupt thing that would have ended the presidency of any past executive, back when any of us had a thimbleful of moral character? Gosh, I was out of the loop on that one. Caught me by total surprise. I didn't realize, all the times Donald was ranting and promising to do the crookedest possible thing, that it was in the cards but I want to assure everyone that, um, none of us here were in on it. Oh, except for this one guy who nobody can stand. Blame Carl. Pretty sure he was in on it.

We should call this move the Ivanka in honor of the presidential adviser who was both closer to him than any other, sharing his every confidence, and who somehow always ended up privately appalled by the horrific decisions that she had absolutely not a damn thing to do with if you're asking her specifically about those.

When will we get our first anonymous Trump adviser op-ed promising America that no, they should remain confident in democracy, behind the scenes everyone in the White House is working diligently to thwart His Royal Fuckup's worst instincts and orders? Will any of them bother?

Because we know one thing: Trump is rapidly going to become despised for his new cruelties, his alliances with violent militia thugs, his mocking, sneering contempt for anyone in America who hasn't licked his boots. Just like last time. And just like last time, he will be surrounded by a sea of suck-ups who will premise their own future political ambitions on not knowing a damn thing about all the evil that went on around them.

They'll all be lying, of course. You don't work for a man who orchestrated a violent insurrection targeting our elected government, the Constitution, and his own vice president unless you are in a friends with benefits relationship with sedition-backing cruelty and evil. I don't give a damn whether any of these people were "surprised" that Trump put his most violent coup accomplices back on the streets after claiming that even daring to prosecute them showed supposed corruption on the part of law enforcement and the Department of Justice.

Don't print anonymous insistences that nobody but Donald is responsible for Donald's corrupt acts and crimes, and everyone else is just tragically being dragged along against their will. It ain't so. If you agreed to be in the same damn building as him after all his past crimes, you're transparently an accomplice to everything he does next.