To paraphrase convicted Illinois ex-governor Rod Blagojevich: Today’s pardon travesty is fucking golden — for anyone who wants to beat Trump in 2020. It would be difficult for the president’s most dedicated enemies to come up with a more damning sleazeball two-fer than Blagojevich and Michael Milken, the junk bond king who stuck a shiv in the American financial system back in the 1980’s. These guys are cartoon-level bad guys whose offenses are easily understood by the public and constituted direct assaults on key aspects of American society. In attempting to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder when it became vacant following Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008, Blagojevich defiled his office and put himself at odds with the interest of all Americans, of all parties, when he essentially worked to cheat Illinois’ citizens of fair representation and befoul the Senate with a criminal who paid his way to be there. And Milken, who was convicted in 1990 on counts including securities and mail fraud, is an infamous avatar of financial abuses and 80’s greed, a man who holds the rare honor of symbolizing in the public mind the corruption of an entire decade.
Today’s other pardons are likewise shitty affairs, and again share the common thread of having been recommended to the president by a motley crew of Fox television personalities, celebrities, and acquaintances. There’s Bernie Kerik, the former chief of the New York Police Department, who was convicted of tax fraud; Edward DeBartolo, Jr., convicted in connection with a corruption case against a Louisiana governor; and David Safavian, convicted in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal. For kicks, Trump also pardoned Angela Stanton, described by the Washington Post as “an author who served a six-month home sentence for her role in a stolen vehicle ring.” Hey, what’s a little grand theft auto among friends?
And so our president, by taking pity on an absurd and undeserving roster of criminals, infamous and anonymous alike, has managed to shine a spotlight on his own unrepentant criminality. Beyond the sheer fact of his sympathy for the devils among us and disregard for the Justice Department’s long official list of people who might credibly deserve pardons and commutations, Trump clearly has a fondness for pardoning crimes of which he and his current administration are surely guilty. Does he see a kindred soul in the foul-mouthed Rod Blagojevich, a man so stupid and crass that he thought he could get away with actually selling a Senate seat? Why, I believe he does! Do Bernie Kerik’s travails for the crime of tax fraud strike a sympathetic chord in the president’s otherwise-unmusical heart? Again, yes! And the Washington Post doesn’t pull any punches in suggesting the president may be establishing the basis for further pardons closer to home, noting that, “The pardons and commutations focus on the type of corruption and lying charges his associates were convicted of as part of the Russia investigation, once again raising the question of whether he will pardon former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and longtime adviser and friend Roger Stone.” There is no thought of other people, always only himself and how to evade responsibility.
The president’s mumble-mouthed defense of these pardons, and the parallel nonsense spouted by those who advocated for them, demonstrate that all are simply getting away with what they can without feeling any need to justify themselves beyond abusing the prerogatives of power and access. When Trump told reporters in reference to Blagojevich, “That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence, in my opinion,” you can’t miss the sheer empty nonsense of the pronouncement (though the armchair psychoanalyst can’t help hesitating over that word “powerful,” and reading into it the president’s own primordial fear of a similar punishment that awaits him should justice actually win the day). Likewise, it’s hard not to laugh out loud at a Trump supplicant’s explanation for why he lobbied to pardon Blagojevich: “It was just so glaring that it was a political case.” Yes, indeed. Blagojevich’s attempt to defraud the American people of a Senate seat was indeed undeniably political.
If Donald Trump’s latest round of pardons for undeserving criminals doesn’t cheer Democrats and others who want the president defeated in 2020, I really don’t know what will. With a few grandiose strokes of a pen, he has self-identified as the best friend the criminal element could ever want. His pardons are exactly those that a criminal himself would make — mercy for the unrepentant and well-connected, and pitiless disregard for the wrongly convicted and the truly deserving. The president may be acting more lawlessly by the day, but when his overreaching is so reckless, so easily grasped by ordinary Americans, it becomes another weapon in the arsenal that will defeat him and the GOP come November.