Trump want us to forget he loves the Jan. 6 rioters. I asked why.

Rewriting history can be challenging, especially for something as notorious as the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It requires the balancing of risk and reward. Is the political blowback from people who remember that violent danger to democracy worth it when compared with seeking support (and money) from people who have let it all slip from memory?
Former President Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about political messaging, might have finally gotten the message about how badly it plays when he glorifies his fans who stormed the Capitol, attacked police officers, shattered windows and looted and vandalized the seat of our government.
Trump, who for months has demanded the release from prison of the criminals he called “J6 hostages” and vowed to pardon them if elected again as president, tapered off from that talk about them just ahead of the Republican National Convention in July.
And a “J6 Awards Gala” scheduled for Thursday at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to raise money to support some people serving sentences for crimes they committed that day is now indefinitely postponed ‒ possibly until after the election.
Trump is in all things transactional. Rewriting the Jan. 6 history was good for him until it stopped being good for him. So now he’s not talking about it.
The timing could not have been worse. Trump’s lawyers are scheduled to appear at a federal criminal court hearing Thursday to discuss a superseding indictment released last week, charging him with attempting to interfere with the results of the 2020 election.
How’s that for a look? His lawyers are in court to fight those charges while the supporters who tried to stop the certification of the 2020 election get feted at his golf club.
The fundraiser was being thrown by Stand in the Gap, a nonprofit co-founded by Sarah McAbee. Her husband, Ronald Colton McAbee, a former sheriff’s deputy from Tennessee, was on medical leave when he went to Washington, D.C., that Jan. 6.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that he, among other things, tussled with a local cop and then pinned him down “while other rioters assailed the officer.” McAbee pleaded guilty to one felony, was convicted by a jury for five more and is now serving a 70-month prison sentence.
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His wife, on her personal website, calls him a hero who has been mistreated.
Sarah McAbee’s co-founder for Stand in the Gap is Shane Jenkins of Texas, who is now serving an 84-month prison sentence after being convicted of seven felonies and two misdemeanors. The Department of Justice said Jenkins “hurled nine different objects” at police officers during the riot ‒ including a desk drawer, a flagpole, a metal walking stick and “a broken wooden pole with a spear-like point.”
The fundraiser was set to “honor and celebrate the twenty defendants who contributed” to a song Trump has played this year at the beginning of his rallies, prison inmates singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” over a tinny phone line.Tickets started at $1,500 per person and went up to $50,000 for a “VIP PLATINUM TABLE OF 12.”
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who wrecked his legal career and now faces criminal charges and a devastating civil defamation judgment for his efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election, was listed as a confirmed speaker.
Trump was listed as an “invited” speaker, but his campaign said he had nothing to do with the event and had not planned to attend. That’s a stretch, no? He has nothing to do with an event at a golf club he owns to support a group he has tried to turn into political hostages?
Consider how Trump spoke about people convicted of Jan. 6 crimes just two months ago during a Florida rally, just ahead of his party’s convention. He claimed that “radical left terrorists” attack cities with impunity but that when “people who love our country protest on January 6th in Washington, they become hostages, unfairly imprisoned for long periods of time.”
That part of his stump speech, which we had heard at rally after rally last year and up to the beginning of July, apparently no longer gets loaded into his teleprompter. Poof! A gust of grievance just blows away.
Trump’s campaign didn’t directly answer when I asked why he dropped “J6 hostage” references from his stump speech, responding instead with a complaint about a “two-tier system of justice” that impacts both their candidate and the convicted criminals from Jan. 6.
The fundraiser drew plenty of media attention and criticism as Trump’s presidential race with Vice President Kamala Harris is narrowing, his lead slipping away. Talk about bad timing.
The tone out of the Trump campaign on this is as off-pitch as those criminals singing the national anthem into a prison phone line. Trump, after all, spoke in June 2023 at another fundraiser for Jan. 6 convicts. Where was that? His golf course, in Bedminster, of course.
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McAbee didn’t respond to my requests to discuss the fundraiser. Maybe she was away, having a good time. Rewriting the history of an insurrection might be lucrative, because this is how she describes her life on her web page:
“When she’s not busy changing the world, you’ll find Sarah jet-setting to destinations, soaking up inspiration from every corner of the globe. A true connoisseur of life’s pleasures, she savors the rich flavors of fine wines and embraces the beauty of diverse cultures with open arms.”
Stand in the Gap was approved by the IRS for nonprofit status in October 2023. The IRS has no financial reports from the nonprofit publicly available online.
The New York Times on Sunday reported that it had viewed text messages from McAbee citing security concerns for the postponement as she tries to reschedule the event after the election.
No matter what you think of Trump or the 2020 election, we all know what we all saw on Jan. 6, 2021. It can’t be whitewashed away with dishonest rhetoric or fancy fundraisers.
The Department of Justice reports that as of Aug. 6, nearly 1,500 people have been charged with Jan. 6 crimes, including 163 people charged with using deadly or dangerous weapons against police officers.
Nearly 900 people have pleaded guilty to federal charges, while 186 were convicted in trials. Prison sentences were handed down for 562 of them. And the FBI is not finished searching for perpetrators of the crimes that day.
This is a history that can’t and won’t be rewritten. Giving into that sort of corrupt revisionism is a surefire way of guaranteeing that the degradation of democracy we all saw on Jan. 6, 2021, happens all over again the next time some politician can’t accept defeat.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan