Donald Trump just decided he cares more about keeping Roger Stone quiet than about winning the election
Earlier this evening, Roger Stone strongly hinted to NBC News that he had criminal dirt on Donald Trump, and that he wanted his prison sentence commuted in exchange for keeping quiet about it. Just now, Trump went ahead and commuted Stone’s sentence in response.
As Palmer Report explained earlier today, and as we’ve pointed out several times during the course of the Roger Stone prosecution and trial, this move hurts Donald Trump politically – and not just a little bit. Voters in the middle have spent three and a half years hearing the Resistance say that Trump is a criminal, and hearing Trump supporters say that it’s all a conspiracy against Trump. They’ve never been entirely sure which side to believe. But Trump just made it very easy for the people in the middle to see that he is indeed a criminal. After all, he just commuted the prison sentence of his own henchman, who was convicted by a jury on seven felony counts.
Just imagine the TV ads that the Biden campaign, and that anti-Trump groups, are cooking up right now about the Stone scandal. Donald Trump probably just knocked another three points off his approval rating. So why did Trump do this? He clearly cares more about keeping Roger Stone quiet than he does about winning the election.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report