Moderator of “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg, laid into former President Donald Trump for defending the rioters at the Capitol on January 6th.
During a Saturday campaign rally in Clinton, Iowa, the ex-president called on President Biden to release the Capitol rioters who were sentenced to prison time for their actions on January 6.
“They ought to release the J6 hostages. They’ve suffered enough,” Trump told a crowd of supporters.
“Release the J6 hostages, Joe,” he continued. “Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”
Trump: You have the J6 hostages. Nobody has been treated ever in history so badly pic.twitter.com/hkBvFc0UAT
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 6, 2024
Almost 1,200 people have been charged in the three years since the Capitol riot.
While 700 people have pleaded guilty, many were convicted of misdemeanors and have completed their sentences.
However, over 100 were convicted in jury or bench trials, and some of them were sentenced to hard time in prison.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in lockup, while Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to a 21-year term in September.
Goldberg disputed Trump’s assertions on Monday’s episode of the ABC talk show.
“They broke the law, they went to jail, that’s how it works in this country,” she contested.
Multimillionaire Whoopi Goldberg scolds poor Americans for being upset about high prices and having that guide their vote.
She says "in fact" they "won't have to worry about it because you'll be in some camp somewhere" when Trump becomes president again.
Argues for open borders. pic.twitter.com/hC9qudj9P6— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 8, 2024
“They are not hostages, they are prisoners, and not prisoners of war because this country wasn’t at war until you showed up,” Goldberg added.
She then asked the show’s fellow panelists what they thought about Trump calling the J6 rioters “hostages.”
“I think it’s a shame and that is why I am engaging in the primary because I want to see Donald Trump stopped in his tracks,” said former Trump administration official Alyssa Farah Griffin.
The ex-White House Director of Strategic Communications implied that Trump would be a dictator if he retook the Oval Office.
She said if the 45th president became the 47th, it “could spell, frankly, the last election in our lifetime.”
It’s not the first time Griffin insinuated that her former boss had dictator-like qualities.
“If you thought the first term of Donald Trump was bad, buckle up,” she said during a show in early December.
“He knows how to weaponize the federal government,” the co-host claimed about allegedly witnessing the behavior herself.
“He has an enemies list — which, by the way, includes the media,” she charged.
“He came after MSNBC, he will truly go after the media in a second term. We can’t take him lightly.”
Griffin shared a story about attending a meeting in the Oval Office “right before” she resigned, when someone had “leaked a story about him going to the bunker during the George Floyd protests.”
“He said, ‘Whoever did that should be executed.’ He’s used that terminology, he’s used it talking about Chairman [Mark] Milley,” she claimed.
“I can’t raise enough alarm bells about how dangerous he is, and how he needs to be stopped at all costs,” Griffin concluded.
At his Iowa rally, Trump downplayed the Capitol riot and said that illegal migrants breaching the southern border in droves was the “real” American insurrection.
“When you talk about insurrection, what they’re doing, that’s the real deal,” he stated. “That’s the real deal. Not patriotically and peacefully — peacefully and patriotically.”
Trump has repeatedly discussed pardoning J6 rioters on the campaign trail.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump told CNN. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them probably they got out of control.”
He would even consider sparing Tarrio from his lengthy prison sentence.
“I’d certainly look at it,” Trump said during an interview with NBC News. “And I’d look at all the other people that have suffered, the ‘J6’ people.”
A day before, Biden dedicated part of his campaign speech in Pennsylvania to further villainizing Capitol rioters.
“Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest; it was a violent assault,” he asserted on Friday.
“They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the Constitution; they were there to destroy the Constitution.”