David Brown, an independent voter in South Carolina, has mostly voted for Democrats in the last decade. But he changed things up last year.
He said he voted for President Trump in the presidential election because immigration was one of his key issues and he felt he didn’t know enough about the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Just one day into the presidency he voted for, though, Brown didn’t approve of some of Trump’s early decisions.
He disapproves most of Trump’s decision to pardon roughly 1,500 people who participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.
“It was an insurrection because to me, he incited those people, but he let them go,” Brown said on Tuesday. “I don’t agree with it.”
Brown, who is now retired, had a slew of jobs throughout his life. One of those jobs was working as a police officer in Washington, D.C. Many of the individuals Trump pardoned were convicted of violence against police. And Brown said letting them free amounts to an “abuse of power” and a “miscarriage of justice.”
“I believe if [the rioters] were instructed to do something and they did not follow the officers or the police enforcement rules and follow what they said, they should be serving their time,” he said. “I think it’s pretty much a slap in the face of the law establishment. … Everyone else has to serve time. They should also.”
Trump has called people who stormed the Capitol “patriots,” and in his pardon proclamation Monday night referred to the Jan. 6 investigations and prosecutions as a “national injustice.”
In an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted earlier this month, before Trump took office, roughly six out of 10 Americans disapproved of Trump pardoning people involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection — a violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election.
According to the survey, 89% of Democrats, 62% of independents and 30% of Republicans disapproved of the pardons.
Dan Mauro is one of the independents who told pollsters he supported the pardons.
Mauro, of Iowa, voted for Trump in the last three elections and told NPR in a follow-up conversation on Tuesday that he knows people who attended rallies and peaceful gatherings in Washington on the day of the insurrection. He said he doesn’t think everyone who was at the Capitol should stay locked up.
However, Mauro said he has a tougher time reconciling pardons for rioters who were violent with police.
“It’s tough to reconcile that,” he said. “I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of people that are upset about the Jan. 6 people. I can understand it. But if they didn’t physically accost a police officer, I have no problem with them.”
Many of Trump’s staunchest supporters, though, refuse to believe that fellow backers of the president were violent that day.
Mary Ann Perruzzi, a Republican voter in Massachusetts, said she thinks Democrats are to blame for what happened at the Capitol, citing conspiracy theories she read on social media.
“It was all a farce,” she said. “I’m really happy that they are pardoning them.”
When asked about the violence against law enforcement that day, Perruzzi denied any Trump supporters were responsible — despite public information linking many of the assailants to right-wing groups.
“The Republican Party that was for Trump would not do that,” she said. “They love this country.”
Deborah Elmore is an independent voter who voted for Trump in 2016 but has since become critical of him and the GOP. She said she doesn’t understand why so many Americans are standing by Trump on this issue.
She said she was “sickened” by “the images of the policemen being squashed in the door” of the Capitol and “seeing people using the American flag to beat other people.”
She said Trump should not have pardoned those individuals.
“I think it’s horrifying,” Elmore said. “It’s against everything that this country is supposed to represent. It’s against law and order. Those people were found guilty of their crimes.”
