Karl Rove: Jan. 6th Protesters Are Not Hostages, ‘They’re Thugs’

ROVE: “If they were smart, they’d take the January 6th and go hard at it, and they would say, ‘He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol.’ I worked in that building as a young man. To me, the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a Jewel of the Constitution. And what those people did, when they violently attacked the Capitol in order to stop a constitutionally mandated meeting of the Congress to accept the results of the Electoral College, is a stain on our history, and every one of those sons of [ bleep ] who did that, we ought to find them, try them and send them to jail.
(Applause)
And one of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said, ‘I’m going to pardon those people because they’re hostages.’ No, they’re not. They’re thugs. There were people — some of them had automatic weapons at a hotel in Virginia, hoping to be able to be called up. We had people saying, ‘Where is Nancy Pelosi?’ We had people who were taking desks and sitting at desks of the speaker of the House, attempting to find people in order to bring them to justice, yelling at the police, ‘Kill them! Kill them all!’ So why Trump has done this is beyond me. If he had said, ‘You know what, I trust our jury system, I trust law enforcement. Anybody who assaulted the Capitol ought to be...’ — I mean, he said it once or twice, but now he’s appearing in a video with people who assaulted police officers with an intent to take the Capitol by force. So, you know, look, I’m a Republican. I don’t want to have a Democratic president. I want to have a Republican president. But we’re facing, as a country, a decision — and everybody gets to make it — as to what kind of leadership we’re going to have. To me, it is a mistake on the part of the Trump campaign to allow the president’s impulses to identify himself with the people who assaulted the Capitol rather than people who stand for law and order.”