So now that the indictments are starting to pile up, the Who's Who among the "centrist" (actually conservative) punditry in Washington are calling on President Biden to "become the statesman" and offer donald trump a blanket pardon for all sins "in order to unite the nation."
There are so many things wrong with that Beltway opinion it took me forty-two minutes to puke my guts out. I'm better now, still angry about it though...
The first thing wrong with Marc Thiessen and Danielle Plekta's proposal is that trump himself would never accept a pardon. Even he would recognize the pitfalls that would put him in. Above all, he loses the Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination on anything that pardon covered. If that covers his tax evasion stunts, that can block him from every business scam he knows to pull off. trump himself may remain protected but everyone who worked for him - could work for him - is screwed. It would cut himself off from every lackey he needs. It also opens him to Civil lawsuits on everything considered under the pardon. He will be stuck in courtrooms until the end of his days.
(There's a reason trump never issued a blanket pardon to the January 6th rioters and even his congressional allies who begged for them: They would have been compelled to testify on him as the DOJ/Special Counsel Smith's office went after trump for inciting it)
The next reason trump would never accept a pardon is that accepting such a thing would be an admission he did something criminal. It would go against his years-long screaming about "WITCH HUNTS" that fuels his "I'm the victim" narrative. He and his MAGA followers could pretend otherwise, but the mainstream media and millions of other Americans - not to mention the world - will never let trump live it down.
Somewhere in the back of trump's mind will be the thought that someone like Joe Biden can use that pardon to exact concessions from trump. Ever the mob boss, trump thinks in terms of "kompromat" all the time (one of the big reasons why trump held onto valued classified documents against foreign powers). Even if Biden takes the high road as Thiessen and Plekta suggest and issue a blanket pardon with no conditions, it will gnaw at trump that he will somehow owe Biden on this and trump's pride will make him reject that pardon.
But those are not the reasons why the Beltway pundits pushing for a pardon are wrong on this.
Above all, these pundits are wrong to claim that a pardon will "unite the nation" and let us "move on."
There are at least 81 million Americans - the number who voted for Biden - who will never accept trump escaping the justice of a courtroom and conviction. All they will see is a system of justice that punishes the lower rungs of the nation - the poor, the ones who can't afford lawyers, the low-ranking members of the military or civic administration who broke espionage and obstruction laws committing fewer crimes than trump has - while the power elites give themselves "Get Out of Jail Free" cards in order to continue their criminal acts down the road.
There will be at least 74 million Americans - the number who voted for trump - who will celebrate and crow that "their" boy donald trump "outwitted" the libruls who "hunted" trump as though winning cheap political points were the objective instead of upholding the Constitution and our belief in justice for all. Their behavior - already bullying and offensive towards those they hate - will get worse with the idea that as long as their Patron Saint trump is untouchable they can do whatever they like.
There will be no peace if trump is pardoned. There also will be no peace if trump is convicted in a court of law, there are no illusions about that, but at least there will be justice done.
No, the only real reason why the Beltway media is eager for Biden to issue trump a pardon is that it gets themselves - the blowhards, the opinionated, the often-wrong - off the hook for wasting 40 years of everyone's time on a Reagan Era Fantasy of (Conservative) Prosperity and Happiness that was never real.
These "Pardon trump" pundits are the same ones who went after the Clintons - especially Hillary - for slights and misdeeds without mercy or reason, they're the same ones who attacked Obama for any perceived flaw. These are the same pundits who gave Bush the Elder a pass when he issued pardons to everyone convicted or facing investigation into Iran-Contra. These are the same pundits who failed to go after Bush the Lesser for covering up the Plame Scandal by getting Scooter Libby commuted to time served, and told Liberals to "let it go" when they screamed about investigating Bush and Cheney for their lies that led to an unwinnable occupation of Iraq and a torture regime - that Thiessen himself cheers on - that blemished our global prestige.
Lemme ask you this, Mr. Thiessen: If Hillary Clinton had been charged and convicted on her secret server and her emails back in 2017-18, would you be calling on then-President trump to pardon her for the good of the nation?
What's happening here is that the Beltway talking heads, having built up their careers pushing a "Both Sides" narrative that equated Republican corruption to Democratic corruption, are running out of excuses for their lazy work. If they could point out the flaws and follies of Democratic elected officials, they did so in the desire to downplay or negate the sins committed by their Republican counterparts.
But they can't do that with trump's pending criminal charges on espionage, obstruction, and (hopefully soon) incitement to insurrection. There are no equivalents among the Democrats that make trump disappear from the judicial media coverage, there is no story out there to distract the Right-leaning media elites from the reality that their conservatism is clearly more corrupt than liberalism.
trump himself is trying to get the media to carry the stories about Bill Clinton keeping his memoir audiotapes in his socks drawer (which was investigated and the DOJ determined no laws were broken), and doing his damnedest to indict Joe Biden for having his Senatorial papers stored in a car garage (ignoring the reality that congressional paperwork follows different federal laws and guidelines). The wingnut pundits would love to spread those stories in the court of public opinion, but they are going to go nowhere in a real-life court of law where trump's crimes will attract attention across every corner of the globe.
So, I would say "HELL NO" to any attempt by Biden to pardon trump. President Biden, you will not be doing this nation or the world any favors by letting donald trump off the hook for the crimes he's committed.
You will only let the useless talking heads in our national media off the hook for being wrong for so long.
2 comments:
No. Just no. If Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, we might not be in this situation. Republicans have got it into their heads that their presidents are untouchable no matter what they do, and they need to be disabused of that idea. Plenty of other countries have prosecuted their leaders for crimes and come out fine. MAGA throw a fit? Prosecute them. Anyway, with so many of their leaders in prison for J6, their fit will be that much smaller and weaker.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Pardoning Trump is a ridiculous argument, and you explore many of the reasons why. My quibbles are that I'm not sure these pundits present themselves as centrists or how widespread the calls are to pardon Trump. As bad as much mainstream punditry is, I think this is a slightly different if related genre, conservatives trying to appeal to centrists who like to believe they're "above politics," and want us to all just get along... and it turns out the way to get along is to never hold conservatives accountable and/or to adopt conservative policies. That also describes Damon Linker, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, and many others. I appreciate you mentioning Iran-Contra, though, which really should be remembered and discussed much more. (And given that some supposed centrists argued against accountability for Iran-Contra, maybe the genre distinction doesn't matter much.)
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