Trump keeps most contentious promise and pardons rioters

While Europe was sleeping, the storm broke over Washington DC.

Within hours of being sworn in as the 47th President, Donald Trump kept one of his most contentious electoral promises, pardoning all but 14 of those convicted over the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol.

Those 14 have had their cases commuted, and even they will be subjected to further review to see if they can be pardoned.

Of the 1,500 or so people who have been convicted, most did not serve jail time, and of those who did most have already been released.

However about 400 remain in prison, and some 300 cases were awaiting trial. Those cases have now been ordered to be dismissed immediately.

It's pretty much all over for the 6 January rioters - or hostages, as Trump called them at his rallies. Sometimes he referred to them as political prisoners. Now they are getting out.

A small nightly vigil for the so-called J6 convicts outside the District of Columbia jail swelled to over 100 participants on news of the pardon, anticipating an immediate release of the 15 prisoners held here.

Some even talked of getting some of the prisoners into some of the Presidential inauguration balls taking place in the city.

The contrast between the jailhouse protestors facing a police line on the freezing streets of Washington, and the tuxedo and ballgown-clad partygoers at the three main inaugural balls that Trump and his wife Melania dropped in on was astonishing.

Among those slated for release are the leaders of two paramilitary groups, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys - sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States - and Stuart Rose, leader of the Oathkeepers, serving 18 years for the same charge.

Tarrio has been pardoned, Rhodes and 13 others - all members of the paramilitary groups - had their sentences commuted.

About 387 people were convicted of assaulting police officers or media workers during the assault on the Capitol.

Michael Fanone, a now retired police officer who was beaten and tasered into unconsciousness on the Capitol steps, condemned the pardons, saying they completely contradicted the support police unions had given to Trump during the election campaign, when the candidate stood on a strong law and order platform.

The outgoing head of the FBI and the leaders of several police organisations also condemned the pardons, saying they sent the wrong signal.

Many had expected the pardons would not extend to those who had assaulted police officers, or who had engaged in serious damage to the Capitol building. But no, Trump decreed that the widest possible pardon would apply immediately.

Trump has often been spoken of as his own producer and director - in the theatrical or movie industry sense of the terms.

He directs his own remarkable political theatre productions, and what happened in Washington overnight was quite remarkable. The conversion of political process into public entertainment.

It began in the late afternoon, when all the formalities of the transfer of power had been completed on Capitol Hill - peacefully and without drama, apart from the President's inaugural address. Which is as it should be.

But then his motorcade swept downtown to the Capital One Arena, home of DC's basketball and ice hockey teams.

There the spectacle that had been denied to the tens of thousands of Trump supporters who had travelled from all over the country to witness the inauguration of their idol on the National Mall because of extreme cold weather was played out in truncated form in front of a crowd of 20,000, the arena's maximum capacity.

Read more: Trump grants presidential pardon to US Capitol rioters

Music, speeches, parade elements celebrating Trump's life and achievements followed. But the real box office element was the enactment of his promise to his voters to get things done on day one in the job. He sat at a table as aides brought him half a dozen executive orders to sign. In public. At a political rally. Live on TV.

They were minor enough - making civil servants return to the office: no more working from home if you are on the federal payroll.

The real fireworks were reserved for the Oval Office, which Trump entered at around 7pm. Sitting at the Resolute desk he started signing a much bigger, much more consequential stack of leather bound executive orders. Again, it was live on television - the political theatre of doing what he said he would do, sating the thirst of MAGA loyalists for action in Washington.

Also in the room were quite a few members of the White House reporting corps, who slowly at first, then in a steady stream, began asking questions of the Commander in Chief as he signed.

When will he meet Putin, they asked - soon, the answer. But he doesn't show any signs of wanting to do a deal, Trump said, adding that Putin is not looking so good that the war has dragged on for three years.

He said Putin is damaging Russia by not looking for a deal, and the Russian economy is being very badly hit, and as for the incredible casualty toll on both sides...

He fleshed out his thoughts on a potential deal on TikTok, signing an order to extend a stay on the shutdown of the Chinese owned App in the US for another 75 days to explore his idea of a joint venture between the US government and someone else to own TikTok’s US business and its 170 million subscribers.

Trump repeated his idea that TikTok right now is worth nothing in the US as it faces shutdown. But if he decides to make a deal, it will have a very substantial monetary value - and he thinks the United States should get half that value in return for keeping the video sharing app alive and in business. A transaction is there to be done by the Chinese, he said.

He criticised Joe Biden for his last minute pardon of his close relatives - his two brothers, his sister and their spouses.

Biden said it was to protect them from potential further attack from the Republican president. Trump argued it set a bad precedent.

All the while, he was applying his own large and distinctive signature to the executive orders. Lots dealing with the emergency on the southern border - an invasion, it is now designated, allowing the deployment of military and financial resources to the border region.

The withdrawals from international bodies and accords - most notably the World Health Organization, which he said was ripping off the US, contrasting the large amount of money the US gives the agency with China, which has a much bigger population, but makes a fairly modest contribution. Money was the ostensible reason, but there was more than a hint of Covid revenge in the move.

More expected - because it has precedent - was his order to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. Trump pulled the country out of the accord when he was President the first time. Joe Biden rejoined the accord, now Trump has pulled the US out again.

It's all of a piece with his criticisms of electric vehicles and wind power, staples of his campaign speeches revived overnight in DC’s basketball arena. But also chiming with "drill baby drill", his energy policy of rapidly expanding oil and gas extraction, including by fracking.

The intention is to achieve energy dominance, not just self sufficiency, and to export oil and gas to Europe.

Trump said to reporters that buying US oil and gas would help Europe avoid tariffs by reducing the EU's massive trade surplus with the US.

The European Commission has already reached out with an offer to buy more US oil and gas - it needs to find a stable replacement for the Russian supplies shut down because of the Ukraine invasion. A long talked of LNG terminal in Limerick is likely to be a part of any Irish policy response to the new Trump regime.

Elsewhere, the US system of government lurched forward as well.

After lunch with the new President on Capitol Hill, the Senate got back to business, voting 99-0 to approve Marco Rubio as Trump's secretary of state, and passing the Laken Riley Act, a law that would give States more power to detain illegal immigrants who have committed or are suspected of having committed serious crimes. It is named after a student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant.

After a long day of speeches, ceremonies, signings, a lengthy news conference and some musical interludes, Donald Trump dropped in on three inaugural balls for a bit of dancing and some more speech making.

A lot of it is repetitive - but that is the secret of success over his four year long march back to ultimate power: keep saying the same stuff over and over again - eventually people will internalise it and start to demand it. Then he could do what he did yesterday, and give his people what they wanted. Or thought they did.

Amidst a hurricane of announcements and executive orders signed, Trump has surely cemented his reputation as one of the great political communicators.

Unorthodox, quirky, defying comparison and overwhelming all imitation. But it works for him.

He has literally talked his way back into the most powerful job on the planet.