His presidency was just an hour old when Donald Trump excoriated Joe Biden for pardoning GOP officials who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots—and promised retribution, in the form of salvation.
“I was going to talk about the J6 hostages, but you’ll be happy because, you know, it’s action, not words that count, and you’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages,” Trump said during a rambling post-inaugural speech that showed his lingering resentment over the 2020 election results.
“I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the unselect committee of political folks,” he added, referring to the bipartisan Jan. 6 panel.
Biden’s pardons also applied to former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who famously called Trump a “total fascist.”
“Why are we doing this? Why are we trying to help a guy like Milley?” Trump said Monday at the Capitol.
But Liz Cheney’s pardon seemed even more infuriating to the new president, who is returning to the White House after a four-year hiatus following his 2020 loss to Biden.
“Why are we helping Liz Cheney?” he asked. “I mean, Liz Cheney is a disaster. She’s a crying lunatic and crying, crying.”