Pardoning Trump is the new GOP presidential litmus test
It started out as a wacky political scenario, the kind floated between Washington pundits huddled at cocktail parties or in cable news network greenrooms: What if one of Donald Trump’s GOP primary opponents dangles the notion of pardoning the indicted former president in an effort to gain political advantage?
The idea is wacky, of course, because it would mean someone seeking to hold the highest office in the nation would be willing to circumvent and nullify the actions of law enforcement agents, judges, and juries to save Trump, someone who has done everything he can to destroy the guardrails of our nation’s democracy; all just to get a leg up in the political race.
Yet here we are. Pardoning Trump is becoming the new GOP presidential litmus test. And the threat Trump has always posed has metastasized into a Republican Party virtue.
The danger of this cannot be overstated.
We already knew the concept of the rule of law is completely lost on Trump. Not an atom of his being evidences a desire to serve the public. Instead, everything he does, including running for president again, appears driven by a noxious mix of ego, grievance, greed, self-protection, and revenge — the latter directed at his perceived enemies, with his current hit list topped by the justice system that has sought to hold him accountable.
So it’s no surprise that he, according to a report by Rolling Stone, is attempting to bully other GOP presidential candidates into vowing to pardon him. It’s a true Trumpian move that serves simultaneously to keep him at the center of the party’s universe, pin his opponents in a corner, and perhaps give him a bit of hope that losing the election won’t necessarily mean losing his liberty should a jury deem him a felon.
But what is shocking, and truly perilous for our democracy, is the willingness of Republican presidential candidates to take that bait. And it’s not just hopefuls like Vivek Ramaswamy or Perry Johnson, whose shots at the Oval Office are so long they require binoculars, getting drawn into Trump’s autocratic trap.
Nikki Haley, who admittedly has vacillated wildly from sharp Trump critic during his first presidential campaign to right-hand member of his administration, said that if the allegations in the federal indictment charging Trump with the willful mishandling of classified documents are true, Trump put “all of our military men and women in danger.”
But in her next breath during a radio talk show interview last week, Haley added that she would be “inclined” to pardon him if she’s elected and he is convicted.
“When you look at a pardon,” Haley continued, “the issue is less about guilt and more about what’s good for the country. And I think it would be terrible for the country to have a former president in prison for years because of a documents case.”
Make it make sense.
Even Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida — who has mastered the art of talking a lot while giving few clear answers about anything, including Trump — promised in a radio interview that if he is elected, his administration “will be aggressive at issuing pardons” in cases where the “government’s been weaponized against disfavored groups.” Even in DeSantis doublespeak, the wink to Trump is hard to miss.
This is the latest and one of the most dangerous ways Trump has chipped away at the very foundational pillars of our nation’s institutions while simultaneously normalizing it. Not long ago, the idea that someone who insults Gold Star families, hurls racist accusations at federal judges, and brags about grabbing women against their will could then ascend to the presidency would be ludicrous. Then came Donald Trump.
I can remember a time when publicly glorifying violent white nationalists as “very good people” would have ended any political career, even that of a publicly elected dog catcher. Then came Donald Trump.
At one time, attempting to steal a presidential election through lies, threats to public officials, and by fomenting a lethal insurrection at the seat of our nation’s government would have spurred bipartisan condemnation that would have led to permanent banishment from public life. Then came Donald Trump.
A big reason we are at this dangerous juncture is because of a decision by a president in 1974: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon after Watergate. It was meant, Ford said, to heal a nation. But we learned just three short years later in a televised interview when the disgraced and pardoned former president declared “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” that Ford didn’t heal a nation. He opened a loophole in our democracy that Trump would later exploit. And now, even his political opponents are helping to place him above the law, to all of our peril.