On today’s show: Trump’s pardons of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have fueled a battle over how history will view the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Tom Jackman of the Washington Post examines this. And this week’s episode of Apple News In Conversation features reporting on America’s militias with ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan. California’s attorney general charged a landlord with price gouging amid the wildfires ravaging the city. Los Angeles Times reporter Liam Dillon explains why that might serve as a deterrent. TikTok got an extension. What does the future of the app look like? NBC News has a look. Plus, why some people found themselves suddenly following Trump on social media, the controversy over AI at the Oscars, and the Super Bowl matchup will be set this weekend. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu. Correction: Sen. Mark Warner is the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Due to an editing error, a previous version of this episode said he was chairman.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Friday, January 24th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, reports of price gouging in the midst of the wildfires in L.A. After TikTok briefly went dark, where it might go next? And the Oscar goes to AI? How to judge an actor's performance when it's been digitally enhanced.
But first, of the more than 1,500 pardons President Trump handed out earlier this week for people who rioted at the Capitol on January 6th, at least one woman has rejected the offer. Pam Hemphill told NBC that it would send the wrong message.
Think about it. The message is, if I took a pardon... that what I did that day was OK. They were criminals. They broke the law. I broke the law. Pay the price.
But Trump has been clear he doesn't see it that way. He's referred to January 6th as a, quote, day of love and described the rioters as patriots. Tom Jackman is a crime and justice reporter at The Washington Post. He says what we're seeing is a rewriting of history.
I have sat in the court for four years and watched the evidence and watched the videos. It's on video. This is not somebody's word against somebody's word. We can see what happened. We can see these individuals attacking the police, overrunning the police, using stun guns on the police, throwing flagpoles and fire extinguishers at the police. It happened. It's real.
The pardons are not popular with the public, according to a number of recent national polls. One conducted by Reuters and Ipsos during Trump's first two days in office found 58 percent of people surveyed disapproved of the idea of broad pardons. But Trump and his loyalists are eager to change the history books.
In fact, Speaker Mike Johnson announced the House would form a subcommittee to investigate, quote, false narratives about January 6th. Jackman told us he's heard concerns from people that the pardons could embolden extremists to carry out other politically motivated attacks.
That's a serious fear that a lot of terrorism-type folks are looking at, that people will think, heck, I can go out and attack a liberal judge or a liberal prosecutor or a liberal reporter that I don't like because this political violence has been approved and sanctioned by the president. And so even if I get caught, he'll let me out.
Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, respectively, received some of the harshest sentences for their roles in the violence on January 6th. Now they're out of prison and they're already talking about retribution. They've spoken this week about going after witnesses, jury members, prosecutors and judges that worked on their cases.
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