White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested that former US President Donald Trump's pledge of pardons for jailed Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol protesters shows he is "unfit" to run again for the Oval Office.
Trump dropped one of his heaviest hints yet that he would challenge Biden to a rematch in 2024 to thousands of supporters at Saturday night's rally in Conroe, Texas.
"If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly," Trump declared. "We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly."
Psaki reacted to those comments at a White House press briefing on Monday.
"He defended the actions of his supporters, who stormed the Capitol and brutally attacked the law enforcement officers protecting it," she said. "I think it’s important to shout that out and call that out."
"He even attacked his own vice president for not, in his words, having overturned the election," Psaki noted. "And it’s just a reminder of how unfit he is for office."
"And it’s telling that even some of his closest allies have rejected those remarks as inappropriate in the days since," the White House spokeswoman said.
It was not the first time Psaki has used the White House press lectern for what some consider to be Democratic Party political campaigning.
Congressional Democrats are continuing efforts to prevent Trump from challenging Biden in the nearing 2024 presidential election by trawling for evidence that he incited the deadly attack on the federal legislative seat after hundreds of his supporters broke off from a "Stop the Steal" rally at the White House that day.
Over 700 people have been charged over the attacks, including a serving US Marine Corps major and some individuals arrested in the days before the protest.
The death of US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by US Capitol Police lieutenant Michael Byrd, was the first direct death reported by local authorities during the storming of the US Capitol. However, reports later tied four additional deaths to the January 6 event, among them that of a uniformed USCP officer Brian Sicknick, who was present at the riot and died of a series of strokes he suffered after returning home that evening. At one point, the death toll had neared nearly a dozen after onlookers and local officials linked deaths that had occurred not directly by the storming.