What did Donald Trump do today?

He leaked yet another walkback of his campaign promises.

Vice-President-elect JD Vance has been all but invisible since the election, overshadowed by the more flamboyant and—according to Trump's staffers—more influential figure of Elon Musk. Today, however, he was dispatched to Fox News Sunday to temper Trump supporters' expectations about a key campaign promise: pardons for the people who attempted to disrupt the certification of President Biden's victory on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to keep Trump in power somehow.

Trump has taken to calling the more than 1,200 people convicted for their crimes that day "hostages," and repeatedly promised to pardon them on his first day in office. But Vance issued a critically different version of that promise today—that Trump would pardon those not convicted of violent offenses.

Vance did not say precisely what would count as violent. Hundreds of the rioters were present when windows and doors were smashed, law enforcement officers were beaten and attacked with chemical weapons, and rioters stalked the halls of the Capitol looking for specific members of Congress. More than 1,000 separate assaults on law enforcement alone have been documented by the Justice Department. By a common-sense definition of violence, virtually none of the people arrested for Jan. 6 crimes would qualify for a pardon by Vance's criterion.

For their part, those convicted of crimes that day have almost unanimously maintained that they were there on Trump's direct orders as President, and that they believed they were acting on his authority. Trump himself did everything he could to further that impression on the day, resisting increasingly urgent demands from both parties to call them off.

Trump was impeached a second time for his role in the attack, and a full report of the crimes for which he was indicted in connection with the events of January 6 is expected to be issued soon.

Trump may simply be letting himself be carried along by the political winds. Pardons for Jan. 6 criminals are deeply unpopular.

Andy Steven Oliva-Lopez bear-spraying police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.(Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images file)

A gallows erected by protestors calling for then-Vice-President Mike Pence to be hanged. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

Capitol Police officer Daniel Hodges is crushed in a doorway by rioters. (Washington Police Department)

Dozens of rioters attempt to surround and trample law enforcement. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, FILE)

Trump exhorts supporters to "Save America" by marching on the Capitol shortly before violence broke out. (Pete Marovich / NYT)

Why does this matter?

• Using mobs to cling to power and then discarding them when they become inconvenient is what dictators do.

• Presidents who don't want to keep their campaign promises shouldn't make them in the first place—especially if they're unpopular and horrendous.