President Trump recently signaled support for compensating those pardoned earlier this year for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“Is there any talk of — cause they lost opportunity, they lost income — any kind of compensation fund or anything like that?” Newsmax’s Greg Kelly asked the president in an interview that aired Tuesday, referring to the rioters.
“Well, there’s talk about that,” Trump told the host. “We have a lot of people ... a lot of the people that are in government now talk about it because ... really like that group of people.”
“They were patriots as far as I was concerned,” he added in the clip, which was highlighted by Mediaite.
The exchange comes after the president issued a blanket pardon for nearly all of those charged for the insurrection just hours after returning to the White House. Trump's offer of clemency to roughly 1,500 people — including those convicted of violence — allowed him to fulfill a longtime campaign promise.
“What they’ve done to these people is outrageous,” Trump said in January, defending his decision despite pushback and a resolution condemning the move from Senate Democrats.
In the most recent interview, the president called the Jan. 6 defendants "incredible people."
“They were treated so unfairly, so horribly,” Trump told Newsmax. “Some of them didn’t even go into the building.”
Polling after the pardons showed that many Americans were displeased with Trump's decision to give clemency to the violent rioters. Around 600 defendants faced allegations of assaulting, resisting or impeding police and 10 were convicted of sedition.
The president has also recently railed against former President Biden's last-minute pardons, including those for family members and the lawmakers sitting on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot, citing the use of an autopen.
“The ‘pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” he wrote last week.
