JD Vance on Sunday tried to offer a rationale to a record number of executive orders and controversial policy shifts enacted by Donald Trump during the first five days of the latter man’s second presidency, claiming without evidence that the moves “accomplished more than Joe Biden” and his administration did in the last four years.
But one of those moves – Trump’s blanket pardons for about 1,500 people who attacked the US Capitol in early 2021 – was labeled a “mistake” by a prominent fellow Republican of the president and Vance: US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who feared the clemency could end up spurring more violence.
In an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, the vice-president addressed Trump’s unconditional pardons of more those who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in a desperate attempt to keep him in office after he lost the presidency to Biden. That included some convicted of violent offenses that Vance – in an interview on Fox News just two weeks earlier – maintained should be omitted from such pardons.
Vance claimed the new administration had looked at each case individually since then and concluded “there was a massive denial of due process of liberty … and constitutional rights”, even though Capitol attack participants did not do “everything perfectly that day”.
“The president believes that,” Vance said, despite undisputed video evidence supporting many of the convictions of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol. “I believe that, and I think he made the right decision.”
Vance also accused the US justice department that Merrick Garland led during Biden’s presidency of being “politically motivated” in his prosecution of those who assailed the Capitol, though a bipartisan Senate reported linked that attack on Congress to several deaths, including suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers.
In a separate interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Graham said Trump had the legal authority to issue them. But Graham said he feared there would be “more violence” as a result.
“Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that’s an OK thing to do,” Graham said.
Graham made it a point to criticize Biden for pardoning family members in the waning days and hours of his presidency, including son Hunter Biden for convictions of lying on gun ownership application forms as well as tax evasion.
“I think most Americans, if this continues, to see this as an abuse of the pardon power, that we’ll revisit the pardon power of the president if this continues,” Graham added. “But as to pardoning violent people who beat up cops, I think that’s a mistake.”
On CBS, Vance offered a preview of his role in the administration: to stump for Trump’s rapid rollout of orders and provisions stemming from key campaign promises that are already facing legal challenges.
Vance defended Trump’s order to allow immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) officers to enter schools and churches to arrest undocumented immigrants. “If you have a person who is convicted of a violent crime, whether they’re an illegal immigrant or a non-illegal immigrant, you have to go and get that person to protect the public safety,” Vance said. “That’s not unique to immigration.”
Trump’s acting Icedirector, Tom Homan, echoed Vance in a separate appearance on Sunday on ABC News’ This Week. “Ice officers should have discretion to decide if a national security threat or a public safety threat that’s in one of these facilities – then it should be an option … to make the arrest,” Homan said.
“The message needs to be clear. There’s consequences … entering the country illegally.”
Trump came under thinly veiled criticism one day after his inauguration when Washington DC Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde asked the new administration to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now”.
The US conference of Catholic bishops later condemned the administration’s immigration arrest orders. Vance said that, as “a practicing Catholic, I was actually heartbroken by that statement”.
He argued that it is lucrative for the Catholic church to “help resettle illegal immigrants” and said he hoped the conference of bishops would “do better”.
Vance on CBS also addressed criticism that US tech leaders, including some of wealthiest men in the world who had donated to Trump’s inauguration, were placed prominently at the 20 January ceremony. Some have suggested that the new administration may give tech companies a break on anti-trust concerns.
Vance has previously said Google and Facebook are too big and need to be broken up.
Vance on Sunday said the tech leaders, including Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, did not have as good seating as “my mom and a lot of other people who were there to support us” and had not given $1m.
“We believe fundamentally that big tech does have too much power, and there are two ways they can go about this. They can either respect America’s – Americans’ constitutional rights, they can stop engaging in censorship, and if they don’t, you can be absolutely sure that Donald Trump’s leadership is not going to look too kindly on them,” Vance said. “They’re very much on notice.”
Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked how any of Trump’s early actions since retaking the Oval Office would lower consumer prices, as his campaign repeatedly promised before he defeated Kamala Harris – Vance’s predecessor as vice-president – in November’s election.
Vance countered that the first five days of Trump’s second presidency had been an “incredible breakneck pace of activity”.
“So, grocery prices aren’t going to come down?” Brennan asked.
“Prices are going to come down, but it’s going to take a little bit of time, right?” Vance replied. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
English (US)