Here comes Donald Trump’s pardon mania
I’m all for President Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden and any other potential Trump target who wants a pardon. Why? Because Trump is going to do what Trump is going to do anyway. We’re already starting to see Trump era pardon mania getting underway.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is already publicly asking Trump for a blanket pardon for unspecified reasons. Greene never misses an opportunity to draw attention to herself, so she may have posted this facetiously. But I’ll tell you who’s not being facetious: New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Adams has been an embarrassment to New York City and to the Democratic Party from the start. He was fairly recently indicted on federal criminal charges and he’s awaiting trial. And now Adams is publicly threatening to become a Republican if the Democrats aren’t nice to him.
Most Democrats don’t want anything to do with Adams as it is, and would be fine with him leaving the party and taking his personal dumpster fire of corruption with him. But it’s not difficult to figure out what Adams is likely angling for: he’s willing to become a Republican if that’s what it takes for Trump to pardon him.
Come on, why else would Adams be floating such a thing? He knows he has no leverage with the Democratic Party or Democratic voters. Instead this feels like it’s for an audience of one. Given that Adams is finished in politics anyway, what would he have to lose by switching to a different party in order to get pardoned and avoid prison?
We’ll see how it plays out with Eric Adams. If anything, his public threat to leave the Democratic Party suggests that he thinks he’ll be ousted by the Governor of New York soon anyway. If Trump wants to pardon Adams and add that stench to Trump’s own ongoing stench of corruption, hey, whatever.
But I think we’re going to see a lot more people angling for Trump pardons on federal charges – especially now that pretty much anything goes. That’s the thing, though. Trump is already surrendering his political muscle out of the gate with idiotic cabinet nominations that make him look like a clown in the eyes of the public. If Trump wants to further weaken himself by playing the corrupt pardon game, so be it. Anything Trump wants to give us, we’ll be happy to use against him when it comes to driving his approval rating into the toilet and making him a lame duck.
