Donald Trump might think he had a mandate to pardon Jan. 6 criminals, including violent felons who assaulted police officers, because he ran on the idea and won his bid for a second term. But if the president is thinking along those lines, he’s making a serious mistake — because the evidence suggests he was elected despite his pardon vows, not because of them.

As Politico reported this week, the Republican’s pardons are not at all popular: “After the election, multiple polls reported that somewhere around two-thirds of Americans opposed Trump’s promise to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants, including about two-thirds of independents.” That’s borne out by a post-inaugural Reuters/Ipsos poll that found most of the public against the idea.

Some recent public opinion research suggested that even about a third of GOP voters opposed pardons for convicted Jan. 6 criminals.

To be sure, history is filled with examples of competent political leaders moving public opinion with powerful arguments and skilled persuasion, but if Trump hopes to convince the American mainstream that some of the most scandalous pardons in our history were worthwhile, he has a lot of work to do.

The day after his presidential inauguration, the Republican was pressed for some kind of justification for putting violent criminals back on American streets. Trump said, among other things, “Murderers don’t even go to jail in this country,” which was both wrong and unpersuasive.

A day later, while sitting down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in the Oval Office, the president gave it another try.

“Most of the people were absolutely innocent, OK?” Trump claimed, ignoring the fact that many of the people he pardoned had pleaded guilty and that many more were found guilty by jurors who considered detailed and overwhelming evidence.

As for the violent assaults on police officers, the new president added, “They were very minor incidents, OK? You know that they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. They were very minor incidents.”

For those familiar with the facts of Jan. 6, Trump’s rhetoric was obscene. Roughly 140 officers were injured by pro-Trump rioters, and five officers’ deaths are tied directly to the insurrectionist violence.

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A report in The Guardian noted, “Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the attacks were captured on surveillance or body-camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.”

In one especially shocking instance, an officer suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury after a pro-Trump rioter drove a stun gun into the officer’s neck. (In June 2023, the violent felon was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. He’ll now walk free thanks to a presidential pardon.)

There were “incidents,” but they were not “very minor.” If the Republican president intends to change public attitudes, he’ll have to do far better.

As for how and why Trump decided to take such a step, NBC News reported that he settled on a maximalist approach just two days before being sworn in for a second term, to the surprise of members of his team.

NOTUS published a related report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, that said Trump saw the far-right backlash against Vice President JD Vance, who said a week earlier that violent felons “obviously” didn’t deserve presidential pardons, and it influenced his decision.

All of which helped create an avoidable and unpopular fiasco to start the president’s second term.