Trump considers full pardon of Johnson

His tweet comes after Stallone’s call about the late black heavyweight boxing champion

As four former presidents and the current first lady travelled to the funeral of Barbara Bush in Texas, President Donald Trump took in his usual Saturday round of golf and issued a morning barrage of tweets.

Shortly after the televised funeral for Bush ended, the president indicated that he had also fielded a call from Rambo.

“Sylvester Stallone called me with the story of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. His trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!”

Trump’s mention of a presidential pardon for Johnson, who in 1908 became the first black heavyweight boxing champion, seemed to serve as a reminder that he wields the power to grant one.

Trump seems to have long been fond of Stallone, an actor most famous for his portrayals of tough guys with machine guns and boxers with inferiority complexes.

Trump is correct that other presidents did not act on requests to pardon Johnson, whose dominance as a boxing champion in the early 1900s elicited racial animosity. In 1910, after Jackson knocked out Jim Jeffries, a white boxer, riots broke out that led to mostly black deaths at the hands of white mobs.

Three years later, a jury convicted Johnson of transporting his white girlfriend across state lines. He served a year in prison and died in 1946.

The Justice Department does not typically consider posthumous pardons because, according to department guidelines, the time “is better spent on the pardon and commutation requests of living persons.”