Why On Earth Is a Prominent Democrat Telling Biden to Pardon Trump?

This is just terrible advice.

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This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become. “Yes I do think so, and I think he should pardon all of those people that have been accused and who have been targeted so we can clean the slate.” —Jim Clyburn, when asked if President Joe Biden should use his remaining days as president to pardon Donald Trump Without House Rep. Jim Clyburn, the octogenarian congressman from South Carolina, there might not have even been a Biden era. It was Clyburn’s machinations, endorsing Biden ahead of the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary, that set in motion a process to clear the primary field to consolidate opposition to Bernie Sanders. That move is credited with resuscitating a lifeless Biden campaign. But on Saturday, Clyburn hopped on MSNBC with advice for Biden that seemed like sabotage for the president’s legacy—if not for the entire Democratic Party. Specifically, he encouraged Biden to spend his final, legacy-making moments … pardoning Donald Trump. But not before he first took credit for some of Joe Biden’s very worst decisionmaking of late. Clyburn began the eight-minute segment, which will tell you almost all you need to know about how Democrats got into this mess, by telling dumbfounded anchor Jonathan Capehart that it was he himself who had insisted, over the objections of a “reticent” Biden, that the president go back on his word and pardon his son Hunter. In explaining his thinking, Clyburn pointed to the time of year: “the season of thankfulness.” Clyburn said that Hunter was “targeted, and everyone knows that.” I’m not so sure we do know that. Remember, the charges against Hunter were brought by the Biden Department of Justice. If the DOJ had become so hopelessly politicized, would that not mean that the Democratic president who appointed its leadership caused that outcome? After laying claim to the deeply dubious decision of that pardon, the optics of which may haunt Democrats for years, Clyburn delivered his coup de grâce: That the man whose brazen lawlessness Biden was elected to stop—and who was charged with 88 criminal counts and convicted on 34 felonies before the Supreme Court sent those charges up in smoke—should also now be pardoned. That, after being outflanked by a judicial system openly captured by Republicans during Trump’s first term—which was no secret to any living American, though Democratic leadership felt little urgency to address or campaign on the issue—Biden should make his capstone gesture after four years of governance a benediction to Trump’s wrongdoing, even for the stuff Trump was convicted for. “Explain to me how he would be any more insulated by this pardon than he seems to already be by the United States Supreme Court with its immunity,” argued a defiant Clyburn, about Trump. Capehart, astounded, responded that surely that was a reason not to pardon Trump, given that it would be a purely symbolic gesture. The symbolism, in this case, would be Democrats stabbing themselves with their own sword. Clyburn’s spectacular embrace of preemptive surrender would also lend an astonishing amount of credibility to the notion that Trump’s legal trouble was the result of political persecution rather than the dispassionate work of the justice system, something Democrats have gone to excruciating lengths to ensure was not perceived as the case. The appointment of Merrick Garland to head the DOJ, himself known for bipartisan appeal, was part of this strategy; so too was the appointment of special prosecutor Jack Smith. “If we keep digging at things in the past, I’m not too sure the country will not lose its way,” insisted Clyburn, which is perhaps a defense the legal team for alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione could try. That shooting was days ago, let’s not get hung up on the past, shall we? Even in the old days Democrats wouldn’t dream of doing this dirty work for Republicans. In 1974, Republican President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, a decision so radically unpopular that it led to Ford’s subsequent defeat. Clyburn no doubt remembers that—he was in his mid-30s at the time—and it was just a year after his friend Joe Biden first got elected to the Senate. How better to understand the pratfalls of the Biden era than this: Not only was its aged leadership not up for the fight, but once defeated, their last, best idea is to do Trump’s dirty work for him, to show that there is agreement among Democrats and Republicans. Not agreement that corruption is bad or that accountability is important, but that the rules indeed do not matter so long as you win.

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