House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik made headlines earlier this week when she appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and failed to commit to certifying the 2024 election results. That was not, however, the only unsettling part of the New York Republican’s on-air appearance.
Asked if she stood by the comments that she made on the House floor calling Jan. 6 a “truly tragic day for America,” Stefanik also said, “I have concerns about the treatment of Jan. 6 hostages.”
“Hostages,” of course, is the same word Donald Trump has been using in recent months to describe people serving prison sentences for participating in the Jan. 6 riot.
By any sane measure, describing these convicted and suspected felons as “hostages” is utterly bonkers. As my colleague Ja’han Jones explained this week, hostages “are people seized by hostile parties, typically in exchange for some sort of ransom. The incarcerated Jan. 6 rioters, on the other hand, have been legally arrested and are facing accountability for things they did — in support of a violent, antidemocratic mob that raided and ravaged the Capitol with lawmakers inside.”
“Calling them hostages,” Ja’han added, “is like saying a bank robber becomes a hostage when taken to prison upon conviction.”
Quite right. I’d just add that for Trump and Stefanik to use such a label is a profound insult to the United States and our system of justice. Gangs, terrorists, and other dangerous criminals take hostages. American law enforcement, in contrast, takes suspects into custody, applies due process, and adjudicates the allegations. Nothing about this process resembles hostage-taking.
As an NBC News report explained this week, “In contrast to the civilians abducted by terrorists overseas, every single Jan. 6 rioter currently being held behind bars is there either because they were found or pleaded guilty, or because a federal judge — after hearing evidence from both prosecutors and the defendants — ordered them held pretrial due to the specific circumstances of their case. Even then, pretrial detainees have the opportunity to have their cases examined by a panel of federal appeals court judges, which several Jan. 6 defendants have done.”
Stefanik is not dumb. She knows all of this. The GOP congresswoman chose to echo Trump anyway.
Why does this matter? In part because the rhetoric is dividing the Republican Party at a time when the GOP is already struggling with fissures. The Hill reported this week:
Republican senators are slapping down President Trump’s claim that people convicted of Jan. 6-related crimes are “hostages” who should be pardoned or set free by President Biden or a future president. Three years after a mob of pro-Trump protestors invaded the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, GOP senators who witnessed the violence of that day bristle at the characterization of individuals who were convicted of crimes as “hostages” or political prisoners.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, for example, said, “I don’t condone that characterization at all, no.” The South Dakota Republican added, “We got a justice system and they’re working through it.”
His predecessor in the GOP leadership, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, echoed the point, saying, “Somebody who’s been duly convicted of a federal crime is not a hostage.”
The Washington Post published a similar report a day later, noting that House Republicans from competitive districts “recoil” at the kind of Jan. 6 rhetoric Stefanik used.
They have had to occasionally dodge comments from far-right, rank-and-file Republicans uttering similar falsehoods, usually an easier thing to do because these GOP antagonists have low profiles. But now a member of party leadership has embraced Trump’s line of attack, opening up vulnerable Republicans to questions about where their political support is coming from.
But just as notable is the fact that these problems aren’t likely to fade anytime soon. Writing from his new perch, The New Republic’s Greg Sargent explained in his new column that GOP divisions over Jan. 6 criminals are “sure to deepen between now and Election Day,” especially as the criminal case against Trump advances.
This is a problem that’s likely to get worse for Republicans before it gets better.
