Trump compares Capitol rioters to WWII Japanese internment

Former U.S. president Donald Trump on Friday compared the people jailed on charges that they stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to the more than 120,000 people of Japanese origin incarcerated on U.S. soil during World War II.

“Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this,” he said in an interview with conservative commentator Dan Bongino. “Maybe the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”

The GOP presidential nominee has consistently tried to play down the storming of the Capitol by his supporters who tried to overturn his 2020 election loss, portraying it earlier this week as a “day of love.” About 140 officers were injured that day, making it likely the largest assault of American law enforcement in a single day. Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by police.

Trump has previously said the rioters have been “horribly treated” and has referred to those still jailed as “hostages” and “victims,” repeatedly calling for their release and suggesting he would pardon them if re-elected.

Trump’s Democratic opponent U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday accused him of gaslighting the public regarding Jan. 6.

The federal government incarcerated an estimated 120,000 people with Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens, following a February 1942 order signed by then-U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt. A 1983 congressional commission concluded the detentions were a result of “racial prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership,” and the U.S. government formally apologized and paid US$20,000 in reparations to each victim five years later.

“Japanese Americans are not and should not be compared to insurrectionists who committed major crimes and in which people were hurt and killed,” said Sharon Yamato, the daughter of former Japanese Americans who were incarcerated. “And I think that that is just so horrible to try to even make that comparison or allege that there’s any similarities between the two.”

Trump claimed the Jan. 6 defendants “won in the Supreme Court,” referring to a ruling from this past June that limited a federal obstruction law that had been used to charge hundreds of Capitol riot defendants as well as the former president himself.

The Supreme Court opinion that Trump claims should have freed the rioters was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court held that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. But the overwhelming majority of the approximately 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to Capitol riot-related federal crimes were never charged with obstruction and will not be affected by the outcome.

Trump also was charged under that statute by special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which has also said the ruling should not have any bearing on its prosecution of Trump on charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump has maintained that he only encouraged supporters to protest “peacefully.” In a speech on the White House Ellipse that morning, Trump told the crowds to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol. But he also used far more incendiary language when speaking off the cuff. He said “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Akira Kumamoto in Los Angeles contributed to this report.