ArcaMax

Republican strategist Karl Rove has some excellent advice for Donald Trump, which, judging by his usual resistance to even the mildest criticism, Trump probably will refuse to hear.

But that doesn’t stop the rest of us from paying attention, especially President Joe Biden and others in his campaign as they try to gain some traction in what looks right now like an uphill battle.

With that in mind, Rove, a Fox News contributor and the chief strategist on George W. Bush’s successful 2000 presidential campaign, observed that Biden’s campaign would be missing a good bet if they failed to spotlight one of Trump’s most outrageous promises: his vow to free the Jan. 6 inmates, whom Trump calls “hostages,” as one of his first acts.

“If they were smart, they’d take Jan. 6 and go hard at it,” Rove said of the Biden campaign in a taped interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber at the recent Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in California, parts of which were aired Wednesday on Melber’s program “The Beat.”

Pleased as Trump may be with that promise, which ignites cheers and applause at his rallies, Rove noted that moderate voters would hear a less happy message: “He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol.”

“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,” Rove said. “And every one of those sons of bitches who did that, we oughta find them, try them, and send them to jail.”

Like countless other outraged Americans, including me, Rove sounded as though he took the attack on our nation’s Capitol personally. “I worked in that building as a young man,” he said. “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.”

I agree. As a loyal American and military veteran, I know I took the chaos at the Capitol personally, as if a mob had just stormed into my house and demanded my car and family photo albums, too. Surely, I thought, Trump’s adventure in politics was over.

But no. Trump regards the hostages as unblemished heroes — and most Republicans in Congress quickly fell in line or found themselves voted out or opting to retire.

And his audacity has only become more bold, notably in recent rallies where he has led his crowds in a salute, touching the brim of his red MAGA hat while a recorded chorus of inmates jailed for their roles in the Capitol attack sings the national anthem.

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