Total Impunity: The Sick Message That Trump Is Sending to MAGA America

[Celerity]

It’s OK for cops to murder innocent people, for husbands to abuse their wives, and for everyone to target trans people.



https://newrepublic.com/article/190586/trump-pardons-executive-orders-sick-message-maga-america

https://archive.ph/HimKR



Karon Hylton-Brown’s only crime was driving a scooter on the sidewalk without a helmet. A 20-year-old Black man in Washington, D.C., he was spotted by police on the evening of October 23, 2020, and an illegal chase ensued in which one cop, Officer Terence Sutton, trailed him in an unmarked car while a supervisor, Lt. Andrew Zabavsky, drove on parallel streets in a marked car. Hylton-Brown exited an alleyway and crashed into an SUV, killing him. Sutton and Zabavsky, who violated department policy and D.C. law by pursuing Hylton-Brown for a traffic violation, later tried to cover up their actions. The former was charged with second-degree murder, and both were charged with conspiracy and obstructing justice; they were found guilty and sentenced to five and a half years and four years, respectively.

To many, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the outcome showed that the justice system—when applied correctly—could indeed hold police accountable for the deaths they cause. But on Wednesday, with the stroke of a pen, Donald Trump wiped away the D.C. cops’ convictions. It’s one of many actions the president has taken since his inauguration on Monday that convey, to select groups of Americans, that they can behave with impunity. Police can kill young Black men. MAGA fanatics can attack government buildings. Men can objectify their female co-workers and abuse their wives. Employers can refuse to accept trans people. You can even be a drug kingpin who solicits murder for hire—just as long as you’re also a hero to the crypto-libertarian crowd.

In the police case above, Trump took the side of white cops. But two days earlier, he showed a somewhat different allegiance, pardoning nearly 1,600 January 6 rioters—including 89 people who’d pleaded guilty to felony assault of an officer and another 76 found guilty of assaulting, resisting, and obstructing officers during the attack. One was Julian Khater, who used bear spray against Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from two strokes the next day. Others included D.J. Rodriguez, who attacked Officer Michael Fanone with a stun gun; Steven Chase Randolph, who assaulted Officer Caroline Edwards with a crowd-control barrier; and Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes, the lead organizers of the attack.

The contrast reveals a pattern. Trump’s compassion—if it can be called that—seems only to extend to those who are part of the aggrieved, pro-MAGA class. To the right wing, Sutton and Zabavsky were victims of a nationwide post–George Floyd crusade against police that made it impossible for officers to do their jobs. (Hylton-Brown’s death led to heated protests at a local police station.) During the 2024 campaign, Trump spoke frequently about providing police officers with greater immunity, despite the fact that they’re already largely indemnified from civil suits, with one study finding that accused officers only had to pay 0.02 percent of payments received by plaintiffs in civil suits. Americans, by and large, oppose qualified immunity for officers: A Cato/YouGov poll from 2020 found 63 percent want to eliminate it. As for immunity from criminal charges, cops are almost never charged with murder even when the evidence against them is overwhelming.

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