Does he realize what he just said?

Jim Jordan, Republican congressman who chaired the committee hearings into during which Pam Bondi testified, accidentally described what Pam Bondi is doing is wrong and what January 6th rioters did as wrong without realizing that he did it. I'm going to play a video for you. And it's I believe that the point here is very clear. Jordan is trying to go after protesters. Jordan is trying to go after people who oppose this administration or oppose ISIS

actions, et cetera. But what he describes is the behavior of Pam Bondi during this very hearing and of the Trump rioters that were subsequently pardoned. Take a listen to this clip. This is unbelievable.

You're not allowed to exercise your constitutional rights in a way that tramples on someone else's, are you? No, no, you can't do that. I mean, you have a right to petition the government under the First Amendment. That didn't mean you can come into this, this room and start screaming at Mr. Raskin or me or anybody else and disrupt a congressional hearing. You have a right to protest on the street, but that doesn't give

you a right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress. Something these guys talk about every day. You can't do that. So when Don Lemon said that he was exercising his First Amendment free press rights, freedom of the press rights, that's not really accurate because he was trampling on other individuals. Right. Is that, is that true?

You know what is fascinating about this? I mean, think about what he is saying. Jordan goes, you can't just yell at people in this hearing room. You can't, you just, you can't do it. But it was Pam Bondi who spent the entire hearing yelling at Democratic members. He goes, you can't come in here and yell at Mr. Raskin talking about protesters.

But it was Pam Bondi who was doing that very thing. Jordan then goes on to say, you can't come to the Capitol and disrupt Congress. Jordan's referring to what is happening here in this hearing. But that is exactly what the Trump rioters did. They went to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and they disrupted Congress and Trump pardoned every single one of them.

That is exactly what happened on January 6th. Now, let's slow it down a little because the irony here is really almost too perfect. Jim Jordan wants to lecture Democrats and protesters about limits and decorum and behavior. And he wants to present himself as the adult in the room. Law and order rules matter. Institutions, all of that stuff. And in the process, he lays out a textbook definition of why January 6th was not a protest

that got out of hand. It was a criminal disruption of Congress. You can protest outside. You can't storm the building. You can't interfere with or interrupt the certification of an election. You can't threaten lawmakers.

You can't smash windows or beat cops or go hunting for the vice president. But the part that Jim Jordan skipped is that not only is that what the Trump writers did, Trump then pardoned a huge number of the people who did that, which suggests you are allowed to do it if you're on our side. And this is the split screen problem that Republicans are creating. On the one hand,

you've got Jim Jordan saying, hey, we've got rules. You got to follow them. There are lines. You can't just walk into the Capitol, yell, stop us from doing what we need to do. But on the other side, you've got Trump calling those people who did that patriots and then wiping away their criminal records. And at the exact same time, Pam Bondi is screaming at members of Congress in hearings, shutting down questions, ignoring questions, saying you should be talking about the Dow at $50,000. Oops. No, I mean, what do I mean? What I mean, what am I talking

about? And, uh, the, the new rules in Trump world are, let me explain what they really mean. You can't disrupt Congress unless you're doing it for Trump. You can't yell and derail proceedings unless you're a defender of Trump like Pam Bondi. And then you can do it. You can't break rules inside of government buildings unless you're doing it to help Trump stay in power. And then the mask just slips off of these people when they say the quiet part out loud.

This is how authoritarian movements talk when they say you quiet part out loud. This is how authoritarian movements talk when they say you can't do X. They literally mean you. We can write. It's OK for them to do it. You're the one who can't do it. And rules continue to become increasingly meaningless and pointless if they only apply to their political adversaries or their political opponents. This one might be too obvious even for Trump to spin, but you know that they're going to only apply to their political adversaries or their political opponents. This one might be too obvious even for Trump to spin, but you know that they're going to try.