Trump frees cop beaters

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Johanek The quote is attributable to a 1965 sermon Martin Luther King Jr. gave the day after "Bloody Sunday," when civil rights protestors were attacked and beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In a period rife with ugliness and hate, King exhorted his beleaguered congregation to live with moral courage when faced with grave wrongs or die with soul-killing silence long before you take your last breath. "A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true." King's prophetic words should reverberate off the walls in this fraught moment for American liberty and justice as the tyrannical hammer of Project 2025 methodically pounds down the rule of law. But they don't. Not to a wide swath of apathetic Americans. Not to their spineless and largely muted political leaders. Nothing drove home the point more than the stunningly suppressed reaction to the presidential pardon of Jan. 6 convicted police beaters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to hang the vice-president, hunt lawmakers and stop the peaceful transfer of power through mob savagery. Crickets and meh is what we got. Although the brazen felon holding court in the Oval Office campaigned on pardoning the "patriots" who bashed, tased and blinded overwhelmed law enforcement officers defending the Capitol, few expected that clemency to include those videotaped beating the hell out of cops in front of the whole world. Former DC cop Michael Fanone was beaten unconscious, suffered a heart attack, concussion and traumatic brain injury: "I've been betrayed by my country, and I've been betrayed by those that supported Donald Trump, whether you voted for him because he promised these pardons or for some other reason, you knew that this was coming." He and others who testified in Jan. 6 cases fear for their lives again now that the insurrectionists have been released. Yet sheeplike Republicans gave Trump a pass on freeing even the most violent Jan. 6 offenders and far-right militia leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy — "to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the government of the United States." J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, celebrate as he is nominated for the office of Vice President alongside Ohio Delegate Bernie Moreno. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Ohio's newly minted U.S. Senator and Trump bootlicker Bernie Moreno defended the pardon of armed rioters on the seat of democracy — "because nobody's been treated worse" — then, with a straight face, proclaimed himself and Trump big backers of the Blue. "Nobody is a stronger supporter of law enforcement than President Trump, myself, or JD Vance. We honor and respect law enforcement. When I walk in every morning, I look at the guards, I say 'Thank you. Thank you for being here, thank you for helping out.' But these people [the pardoned police beaters] have been treated horribly." No, Bernie, the tried and convicted thugs had their due process in court. The gruesome videos of Jan. 6 document who was really treated horribly by MAGA combatants summoned, assembled and sent to the Capitol by Trump to "fight like hell" over his baseless lie of a stolen election. The police who were dragged down the steps, beaten with everything from flag poles and pipes to fire extinguishers and baseball bats, are the victims Moreno sold down the river with sympathy for their attackers. Thanks for nothing. Some GOP leaders, including Vance, who had previously argued that "obviously" violent protestors should be excluded from any presidential reprieve, were notably mum after Trump's sweeping amnesty of the horde that pulverized officers and desecrated, defecated and plundered its way through the Capitol while lawmakers ran for their lives. Other cowardly Republicans, like Ohio's Jim Jordan, hid their disagreement to Trump's decision with a walk-off line that the pardon was his to make. No point in decrying the glorification of political violence in service to a sore loser. Trump might invite the insurrectionists to the White House. Not a peep from Ohio Republicans about the hundreds of vindicated criminals released into communities, including Ohio hometowns, or the emboldened paramilitary leaders who threaten to "bring the heat" on those who held them accountable. One pardoned Ohioan considered his crimes for Trump "an honor." It's sick. The horrendous siege of America's citadel of democracy on live television repulsed the nation four years ago. Today the man who incited that siege to steal a second term recasts it as a "peaceful day" with skirmishes that resulted in "minor injuries" (not critical injury and death) and portrays his rioting red shirts as heroes imprisoned as "hostages." George Orwell must be spinning in his grave. Opposition to Trump's fanciful narrative is nonexistent from Republicans and most of the country doesn't seem to care. Jan. 6 was bad but whatever. Are we all the walking dead in this country? Trump's blanket pardons of his most vicious foot soldiers on a mission to forcefully overturn a democratic election was, as an enraged Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur said, "a sacrilege against our republic and our constitution…an affront on decency and a violent attack on the rule of law." Be outraged. Take King's sermon to heart. Stand up for what is right in "the fierce urgency of now" because staying silent on what matters will kill your soul. Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.