So sad that Trump has done this to our country!

Political violence is supposed to repel us. But Trump allies are acclimating to it.

This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 6 episode of "The Rachel Maddow Show."

In 2018, in Coral Gables, Florida, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi attended an event for Donna Shalala, a Democratic congressional candidate. In response, the local Republican Party in Miami-Dade County called for a protest of that event. ....

According to their analysis, "Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year-or-more were convicted of committing an act of violence.”

This means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardon power are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.

Then there’s the deeply conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, which published a piece with the headline, “Trump’s Pardon Promise for Jan. 6 Rioters: Does it include the ex-meth trafficker who brought a metal baton and swung it at police?” .....

Yes, there’s an unnerving, unsettling, fight to remember what actually happened — to be real about how disgusting it all was — while the Trump movement and the Republicans try to say the attack was a bunch of heroes who have been wrongly persecuted for doing nothing wrong.

But there is an instrumental and practical question at hand, too. Which is, what happens to the future of political violence — in the very short term — if the people who committed violence on the president-elect’s behalf are sprung from prison and celebrated as vindicated heroes when Trump takes office again?

The idea that there is permeability between violence and politics, that what is supposed to be civic hallowed ground, is fouled by the rioting and looting we saw take place, in Trump’s name, on Jan. 6, 2021.

That is supposed to repel us and disgust us — indelibly. We are never supposed to acclimate to that. But the Trump side has. And so now, four years later, with just two weeks until Trump is back in power, we must be prepared for what could happen next.