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The Case Against Pardoning Trump

August 9, 2023 · 11:00 am ET · Leave a Comment

Charlie Sykes: “When President Gerald Ford issued a pardon to outgoing President Richard Nixon, he could reasonably assume that Nixon would go more or less quietly into exile. He was not the avatar of a mass movement that continues to lay siege to democratic institutions.”

“Trump on the other hand…”

“Does anyone seriously believe that a pardon would disarm Trump, or calm the base into rationality and respect for democratic norms? Does anyone (anyone? anyone?) think that he would — as Susan Collins so famously and wrongly claimed — ‘learn his lesson’?”

“Would a pardon put a stop to his firehose of demagoguery, invective, abuse, and attacks on the ‘deep state‘ and the criminal justice system? Does anyone seriously think that a pardon would lance the boil of revanchist Trumpism?”

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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