The Story That Wasn't That Is

​I realized something yesterday that I hadn’t yet seen discussed anywhere as a story yet.  In fairness, it’s not really “a story.”  It’s more of a situation to anticipate.  But it’s most definitely something I believed that people should keep an eye on, and I mentioned that on social media.

It came about when I saw a story yesterday about a Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump who was shot to death on Sunday in Indiana after resisting arrest.  This according to Indiana State Police.

And there’s another story today about a pardoned rioter who police are trying to find, but he’s evading them over a past charge of solicitation of a minor.

What I realized is that this is an added problem for Trump and MAGOPs in Congress who are defending his mass pardons: whenever one of these pardoned criminals is arrested, it will (or should be) a news story about who Trump released into the public.  And there are now 1,500 released criminals (hundreds of them convicted of violent crimes) who have to stay perfectly clean, out of trouble with the law -- every day. Not just until the mid-terms, but for four years.  And for some, who should have been in prison for up to 20 years, every day until then.  Or it becomes a story about “Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump arrested for…”

I should clarify one thing.  At the beginning of this piece, that “I hadn’t yet seen discussed anywhere…” anything about this – but that wasn’t my original draft.  At first, I wrote, “I haven’t seen discussed anywhere.”  But I had to change that.  Because last night, after I’d finished my article, there was Rachel Maddow opening her show with her first story about the Jan. 6 criminal who’d been pardoned by Trump getting killed by Indiana police as he fought with police, had a gun and tried to escape!

Well, as I noted in my earlier social media posts and here, it turns out that this could indeed become a big problem for Trump and his enabling MAGOPs as some of those 1,500 pardoned criminals do get in trouble with the law – because clearly now, as we just saw last night with Rachel Maddow, it will be reported!!  As this was.  As the lead story. 

(No, not all the stories will be as dramatic, deadly and noteworthy as this one, but just being a pardoned convict getting arrested is enough – especially if it happens to many of the pardoned criminals time and again before the mid-terms, or over the next four days…and every day for the rest of their lives.  The more it happens – and with 1,500 people, hundreds of who were convicted of violent crimes, including beating the police, it’s hard to imagine that it won’t happen ever…let alone reasonably soon – the more the building numbers will become a story.)

By the way, there’s also a problem for MAGOPs who might try to criticize police or defend the guy who was killed.  I'm very sorry the guy is dead. I'm sorry, too, that he foolishly resisted police and had a gun while doing so. But as Fox and MAGOPs always say whenever a Black person is killed by police – “If you're stopped by the police, don't run.”