(AURN News) — President Donald Trump, who once dismissed reparations for Black Americans as “a very unusual thing” and appeared displeased when I questioned him directly about the subject during his first term, is now considering providing compensation to individuals arrested for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The stark contrast in positions emerged during a recent interview with Newsmax host Greg Kelly, where Trump addressed the possibility of compensating those who faced legal consequences following the Capitol riot.
“Well let’s talk about that. We have a lot of people talk about it, a lot of the people that are in government now talk about it because…a lot of the people in government really liked that group of people,” Trump responded. “They were patriots as far as I was concerned.”
Trump continued, “I talk about them a lot, they were treated very unfairly. You know, the thing they show is they show a group of a 1,000, whatever it may be 1,500 people there, what they don’t show, you never see the crowd that day. It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to before. A group of people went down there, peacefully and patriotically.”
The president, at the start of his second term, pardoned approximately 1,500 individuals convicted of offenses related to the Jan. 6 attack as one of his first official actions after returning to office.
This consideration of reparations comes years after I asked Mr. Trump face to face about reparations for Black Americans in September 2019, following a June 2019 interview with The Hill where he had stated he did not see such compensation happening.
Click play to listen to the AURN News report from Jamie Jackson:
