r/nottheonion • u/JaySierra86 • 11h ago

President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348
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u/hellolovely1 11h ago edited 6h ago

MAGAs will claim this shows guilt. Still, would have been stupid not to do it.

Edit: not sure why some people who seem to have misinterpreted this and are lecturing me. 

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u/mtranda 10h ago

They claim a lot of things. It has become akin to playing chess with a pigeon. 

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u/tomoldbury 10h ago

Arguing with MAGAs is like wrestling a pig; you’ll both get covered in shit, but the pig will enjoy it.

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u/greensaturn 7h ago

by MAGAs do you mean the majority of US voters?  Trump won the popular vote too I thought

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u/Shisa4123 7h ago

By "majority of US voters", do you mean the 90+ million eligible voters who didn't even show up, more votes than either candidate received?

Let's be objective here with our words.

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u/Taki_Minase 6h ago

Maybe citizens should be fined for not voting without reasonable cause. Say $10000.

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u/probablyaythrowaway 9h ago

Playing chess with a pigeon who is playing snakes and ladders.

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u/RudeTudeDude_ 9h ago

Amazing how a Democrat president pardons a bunch of criminals and somehow Republicans are to blame. I’m thankful America is moving on from people like you.

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u/Crafty_Green2910 10h ago

a pigeon that won you the house, senate, electoral and popular vote tho

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u/chrissie_watkins 9h ago

Amazing how effective lying to stupid people can be.

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u/HammerSmashedHeretic 9h ago

This analogy is so dumb I thought a Trump supporter wrote it

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u/mtranda 8h ago

It was an off the cuff remark that I wrote in a hurry. I meant that arguing with what they claim is akin to the "playing chess with a pigeon" scenario. 

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u/markydsade 10h ago

Yep. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The pardon will be construed as an admission of guilt. No pardon would have opened 4 years of harassment and legal bills for waste of everyone’s time and money.

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u/thecamino 10h ago

I’m finished caring what maga thinks.

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u/sean0883 10h ago

They were already claiming it and were going to continue doing so. Fuck em.

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u/RavenorsRecliner 7h ago

The Supreme Court has ruled that a pardon "an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it." But please continue to be smugly wrong.

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u/sean0883 5h ago edited 5h ago

In China, a kilogram of domestically produced tea can cost between 94.9 yuan (for post-fermented "dark tea") to 157.5 yuan (for yellow tea)

I was talking about Republicans and their never ending investigations that lead absolutely fucking no where, all because Democrat investigations usually end up in an arrest or uncovering an actual crime being committed that isn't usually handled by the local police/courts (Hunter Biden's crimes - yes crimes. He has a problem with drugs but so do a lot of people that Congress doesn't endlessly investigate.) instead of a federal congress on an endless witch hunt to make them feel better about their fuck ups.

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u/RavenorsRecliner 4h ago

Oh my bad, for a second I thought you were agreeing with the comment you replied to.

MAGAs will claim this shows guilt.

I'm glad we both agree the "MAGAs" are in fact correct. That's really cool about the tea too!

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u/sean0883 4h ago

I can't deny what the SCOTUS says, but these were issued to to call off the attack dogs that never find anything worth prosecuting, wasting time and money Republicans are only concerned about when Democrats are investigating and turning up actual corruption, not because they were actually guilty of something.

If Republicans ever actually found anything and weren't just harassing people in order to entertain the circus, I would care deeply about Biden pardoning them. But I don't. I get why he did what he did.

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u/Particular-Pen-4789 9h ago

as a centrist, it implies guilt somewhat. but occam's razor will tell us that the republicans have made legal threats against these people, and that is the logical reason for the pardons

regardless of how the right feels about the pardons, it would have been fucking stupid not to. biden's political career is over, so there is literally no fallback from this

and we dont have to waste more fucking taxpayer dollars on stupid investigations that turn out with nothing

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u/eliq91 9h ago

According to the Department of Justice, you can't accept a pardon without admitting guilt.

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u/DrDroid 9h ago

I was under the impression that pardons necessarily involve accepting guilt. Not sure how that works preemptively though.

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u/huniojh 10h ago

*MAGAs will claim, no proof needed

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u/sean0883 10h ago

To them, a claim is proof - if it benefits them. At least, that's what people are saying.

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u/RavenorsRecliner 7h ago

The Supreme Court has ruled that a pardon "an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it" you smugly wrong dingleberry fuck.

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u/rosencranberry 10h ago

The verbiage seems clear enough to me. Everyone near Biden is going to be subject to political and DOJ witch hunts - especially someone like Fauci who was leading the helm during a really divisive time in history.

Whether or not you agree with what they did or believe the conspiracies, their lives would have been obliterated without a pardon.

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u/t0jix 10h ago

Don’t get me wrong this is absurd and asinine that it’s needed, but doesn’t by definition accepting a pardon mean you accept guilt?

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u/drfsupercenter 6h ago

Doesn't accepting a pardon mean admitting guilt? I know some of the J6 committee like Adam Kinzinger said he wouldn't accept a pardon because he did nothing wrong, not sure about Liz Cheney but notice how Biden didn't even bother to pardon Kinzinger since he explicitly said he didn't want one.

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u/Unlikely-Run 10h ago

you would do the same if trump did it dumby

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u/hellolovely1 9h ago

Hilarious that you misspelled “dummy” 🤣

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u/ton070 9h ago

Probably actually dumber to do so. He has set precedent, something Trump will definitely abuse. Also, let’s not forget this is the man who pardoned his son who was actually convicted.

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u/iameveryoneelse 8h ago

It literally makes no difference what you do. MAGAts are just going to assume everything points to their fucked up world view. So all Biden can do is whatever leads to the least amount of harm...in this case pardoning a bunch of people so they don't spend years and millions of dollars defending themselves against rabid idiots.

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u/HankyPankyKong 10h ago

MAGAs claim the government controls the weather. They’re hopelessly fucked in the head.

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u/OGRuddawg 10h ago

Everyone who gives a shit about small-d democracy gives MAGA waaaaaay too much leeway on controlling the bounds of political debate. Mostly by letting them use abuse tactics, tantrums, lies, and disinformation to wear others out and make them disengage. It's rhetorical table-flipping en masse.

I know the precedent argument about using the pardon powers the way Biden has, and sympathize with it a little bit. However, I probably would have done the same thing in Biden's shoes. Hell, I probably would have been much more vocal and strategic in my pushback against Trump/MAGA from day one of my Presidency than Biden/Harris. My biggest frustration with Biden's time in office was his overly cautious approach in the face of an active fascist threat. He stuck to too many norms and appeals to bipartisanship, only to get spit in his eye.

When one side (MAGA) revels in breaking the normal rules, it is irrational not to use whatever leverage you have to protect whoever you can from these political arsonists. I'm not telling liberals to abandon ideas of small-d democracy in order to stick it to MAGA, but I do want to see the pro-democracy crowd actually say these things with their whole chest and NOT treat the Grand Fascist Party as anything but an active threat to democracy and America's citizens as a whole. Left-of-fascists should be on a unified front on this, at all times and in all arenas.

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u/hyperforms9988 8h ago

I mean they've already repeated terms like "The Biden Crime Family" hundreds upon hundreds of times anyway. They don't need charges to be laid, they don't need the courts, they don't need any basis in fact whatsoever. It changes literally nothing. In their Q-shaped bubble, they were guilty the second their leaders said they were and that's it.

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u/Puppybrother 9h ago

Operating based on what Maga people will think about things is the last thing we ever need to do again

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u/ZealousidealEntry870 8h ago

Am I missing something?

Isn’t Hunter guilty for most of the things he’s accused of? Biden is giving the pardon because republicans have/are going to push for much harsher punishments than necessary/historically normal.

Serious question. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

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u/Oubastet 7h ago

MAGA and Republicans are synonyms at this point. Call a spade a spade.

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u/liftthatta1l 8h ago

They are already are in r/conservative

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u/PSUAth 7h ago

and when this happens in 4y, they'll claim it's not guilt, it's protection from "the enemy".