In addition to their hostile interview of Secretary of State Marco Rubio about January 6 and two surprising segments about First Lady Melania Trump’s fashion at the inauguration and the evening balls, CBS Mornings made January 6 and President Trump’s pardons the most important takeaway of this new day in America plus a side of illegal immigrant sob stories.
It began with co-host Nate Burleson tossing to correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who has made January 6 his life’s work and source of worth (and maybe the only reason why he got this job at CBS after years at the local NBC affiliate). Take that into consideration as you watch this video in which he concedes it’s all gone poof with the stroke of a pen:
Watch this lead-off report from ‚CBS Mornings‘ and consider the fact that correspondent Scott MacFarlane’s life work — obsessing over every nook and cranny of January 6 — is now over with President Trump’s pardons and commutations pic.twitter.com/ADr3X4QBY5
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 21, 2025
After Burleson told him “[s]ome of this seemed to take even the President’s allies by surprise,” MacFarlane said that was “because the pardoned include those who committed violent acts on January 6, including those who gassed, clubbed, and maimed police officers and those who stole and destroyed property here at the Capitol.”
He continued to seethe in this reluctant trip aboard the struggle bus and found not only foul-mouthed former cop Michael Fanone (a liberal icon from that day) and a defendant who eagerly accepted the Justice Department throwing the book at her (click “expand”):
MACFARLANE: Supporters of January 6 inmates celebrated outside a DC jail —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So this is January 6th —
MACFARLANE: — after President Trump signed broad pardons and commutations for the defendants who attacked the Capitol and sought to overturn the 2020 election —
CROWD: ONE! USA! USA!
SCOTT MACFARLANE: — and ordered federal penitentiaries to release hundreds of defendants still in prison by Tuesday, contrary to what Trump’s own vice president thought was possible.
JD VANCE [on Fox News Sunday, 01/12/25]: If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.
MACFARLANE: Trump championed his decision at a rally before signing the order referring to January 6 rioters as “hostages” even while standing beside the families of Israeli hostages.
TRUMP: We’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people — a lot of people.
MACFARLANE: When pressed in the Oval Office about why he pardoned the 600-plus defendants charged with assaulting police, Trump made baseless claims the FBI was involved in instigating the attack.
TRUMP: There were outside agitators involved, and obviously the FBI was involved.
MACFARLANE: Far-right group leaders, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and plotting the attack are among those receiving clemency.
MICHAEL FANONE: Donald Trump has determined that those individuals should not face any accountability solely because they committed those acts on his behalf.
MACFARLANE: Michael Fanone, a former DC police officer was attacked at the Capitol.
FANONE: I can assure you that these individuals will go on to commit acts of violence, maybe even commit acts of violence against me or members of my family. The American people own this decision.
MACFARLANE: Pam Hemphill, an Idaho grandmother, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for her participation on January 6th.
PAM HEMPHILL: I already had decided I will not take a pardon from Trump. That would give the wrong message. I’m not going to rewrite their story for them. That day, we were guilty. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and so are they.
MacFarlane then concluded with a hint of resignation: “The largest criminal prosecution in U.S. history is abruptly over with the stroke of a magic marker. Not only will the jails be emptied of January 6 defendants, but all pending prosecutions have been ordered to be closed, effective immediately.”
The focus shifted next to other Trump day one moves. Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes started by emphasizing ones prone to enrage the left: “Among the many executive actions Trump took yesterday, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords again, froze hiring at the Internal Revenue Service, and he took a step toward denying birthright citizenship, even though it is authorized in the Constitution.”
She did get to ones about TikTok and the border plus nods to Trump’s “impromptu press conference in the Oval Office” as he signed executives, his inaugural address that was “focused on the future,” and a second speech in the Capitol Visitor’s Center she fretted as having “returned to some familiar themes.”
Border correspondent Omar Villafranca came next and went to the eye-rolling trope of tugging at one’s heartstrings and featured one illegal immigrant who falsely claimed Trump believes “all immigrants is [sic] the enemy” (click “expand”):
VILLAFRANCA: A series of executive orders signed by President Trump Monday, designed to crack down on immigration had an immediate impact as the new administration shuttered an app used by asylum seekers to book appointments with immigration officials and canceled all outstanding bookings, including the one for Margulies Denoko (sp?) from Colombia who waited months for this day. “I don’t know what my life will be from here,” she said. About 30,000 migrants were waiting to enter through the app. Sources tell CBS News, Trump is also planning to ramp up operations to arrest unauthorized immigrants across major US cities this week, as he pledges to oversee the largest deportation effort in US history. Chicago is now bracing for raids to detain and deport.
YESSENIA RAMIREZ: The new President tell us very clear, everybody is the enemy. All the immigrants is the enemy.
VILLAFRANCA: Yessenia Ramirez has lived and worked in the U.S. while undocumented for 20 years. She spoke about the fear spreading in her community.
RAMIREZ: You don’t see it, but you feel it. You have the panic attacks. You cannot sleep.
VILLAFRANCA: Less than 24 hours into his second term, Trump also signed orders to keep asylum seekers in Mexico while awaiting immigration hearings, labeled drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and promised to send troops to the southern border. Last month, Border Patrol encountered around 96,000 foreign nationals at the southern border, down from more than 300,000 in 2023. The Texas National Guard is already stationed here on the Texas-Mexico border, and has been since 2021.
This went into the last inauguration segment of the first half-hour. Longtime CBS News personality John Dickerson brought his smug pomposity to bear, starting with this rank hypocrisy:
IRONY ALERT: Pompous incoming @CBSEveningNews co-anchor John Dickerson complained on @CBSMornings that Donald Trump is the one who made January 6 the focal point of Inauguration Day and implies he has no respect for the Constitution.
For him to complain January 6 “was more on… pic.twitter.com/lODtqlCmu6
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 21, 2025
After seconds earlier saying Trump is the person responsible for all the talk about January 6, CBS’s John Dickerson reiterates Trump broke his “oath” of office “in his effort to overturn the 2020 election” and yet was allowed by voters to return with “an extraordinary husbanding… pic.twitter.com/bWTnVDg1ek
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 21, 2025
In his third answer, he expressed skepticism that he’d be able to achieve on campaign promises, wondering if he’d “make progress on the things that people elected him for who were not in his core base” and expressing concern he’s “testing the boundaries” of presidential power “by blowing right through them.”
The second hour featured a panel discussion with CBS News contributors Joel Payne from the Obama team and Terry Sullivan from Rubio’s 2016 presidential camp.
They first went to Sullivan with — what else — January 6 (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: Terry, let’s start with you, because we had Marco Rubio on the show earlier and we asked him about January 6, the pardons for 1,500 people who participated in that riot at the Capitol. He did not want to get into it. He said he’s focused on international matters, not domestic matters. Never mind what he had to say about January 6th back when it happened. But I think January 6th is one of those topics where popular support for the pardons is actually not there for the president’s actions, and I wonder, what does it say to you as a Republican to see him take it up so quickly and so controversially?
SULLIVAN: Well, first of all, Marco is always better answering questions than I am, as he would like to point out to me in the past. The — look, here’s what it says, is that that America knew exactly what it was getting when it voted for Donald Trump, and he did things he said he was going to do, which I think is a juxtaposition to what Joe Biden did, which he said for years that he wasn’t going to pardon his son Hunter, over and over again, and he did it and so, I know those, those two things are different, but President Trump went out there and said exactly what he was going to do, and that’s what he did yesterday.
DOKOUPIL: And Terry, do you expect members of Congress, you know, Secretary of State Rubio said, look, I’m not a senator anymore. I don’t have to get into this. But everyone else there who is still in office is going to be asked. Do you think they’re going to comment on it or they’re going to back away?
SULLIVAN: You know, I think some will. I think most won’t. Look, folks want to look forward and talk about real policy initiatives, the agenda, the things that President Trump signed yesterday that legislatively, I think those are the things they want to focus on.
To co-host Gayle King’s credit, she at least asked Payne about now-former President Biden pardoning five additional family members (besides son Hunter) minutes before his presidency ended and if that move left Democrats without “a leg to stand on” in criticizing pardons.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from January 21 (including the full segment with Payne and Sullivan), click here.
