WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he still loved the idea of a $1.8 billion fund to use taxpayer money to pay his allies who claim they have been politically persecuted, even after his administration said it was dropping the plan.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said Tuesday that the administration was “not moving forward with the fund, period,” after the plan drew enormous, bipartisan backlash.

But in his first public comments since then, Trump did not disavow the politically toxic pot of money, which critics have characterized as a slush fund.

“I love it,” Trump said of the fund. “I think it’s so important.”

Asked whether the fund was actually dead or merely on hold, the president said: “I’d have to ask the lawyers.” He added: “The weaponization fund, as far as I’m concerned, was a beautiful thing.”

Trump’s comments appeared to be a way to distance himself from the decision to back away from the fund.

The president then spoke in praiseworthy terms of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” defacing the halls of Congress and attacking and injuring more than 150 officers.

“These are great people that were destroyed, their families have been destroyed,” he said, adding, “They went there with love.”

In one of his first official acts of his second term, Trump issued a sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol, issuing pardons to most of the defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Trump’s proposal could have enriched through taxpayer dollars those who attacked the Capitol; the prospect spurred widespread outcry among lawmakers, many of whom had fled the mob violence. In response, Republican senators blocked the passage of a spending bill as a protest, unless the fund was killed. They moved forward with the bill Wednesday, around the time the president made his remarks praising the fund.

The president said Wednesday he thought the fund was “so important.” He said many people including himself had been victimized by law enforcement.

“I’m one of them,” he said. “Look, they raided my house.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Luke Broadwater/Doug Mills
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