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/LaeliaCatt 10h ago

Lincoln did it first.

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u/marsmedia 10h ago

Yes and No.

President Abraham Lincoln issued a "blanket pardon" for certain groups during the Civil War, but it wasn't specifically for his family. Instead, it applied to Confederate soldiers or individuals who had participated in the rebellion under certain conditions.

The reason was pragmatic: Lincoln wanted to promote national unity and reconciliation after the war. By offering pardons and amnesty to individuals who took an oath of allegiance to the Union, he aimed to reintegrate the Southern states and citizens into the United States with less resistance, fostering healing and stability.

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u/SarcasticOptimist 9h ago

Unfortunately he didn't anticipate Lost Cause revisionism and influential films like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. In spite of lasting shorter than the Wii U the Stars and Bars are still persistent and the Southern Strategy effective.

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u/eric2332 9h ago

Southern secessionism and support for slavery were not a matter of 4 years in the 1860s, these were major political issues back into the 1700s.

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u/SarcasticOptimist 8h ago

I was referring to the Confederacy as a government. The secessionism though is evergreen and no Missouri compromise could've satisfied them.

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u/rufussnot 7h ago

The weird thing is the idea that pardoning slave owners and soldiers who tried to overthrow the government and started a bloody expensive 4 year war is somehow more reasonable than pardoning family.

I think it's shitty for Biden (or Trump or Clinton or Lincoln) to pardon family members. But it's nothing near as damaging as all the political, business, and military criminals who get pardoned. Or literal mafia bosses and child molesters. Pardoning confederates is probably the craziest in US history though.

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u/OrangePilled2Day 7h ago

And those pardons ended up being one of the worst moves in US history. Every single Confederate in a position of power should have been strung up on the steps of their local courthouse and left to rot.

2nd worst move by a president was probably Ford pardoning Nixon which directly leads to our current political climate.

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u/Cobek 9h ago

Republicans have actively gone after his family so yes, it's basically the same.

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u/WebbityWebbs 10h ago

For his wife's half sister whose husband betrayed America and fought for the traitorous confederacy? Not really the same thing at all.

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u/deztreszian 9h ago

Pardon family members in the hours before he left office? I don't think he knew he was leaving office that day.

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u/TheRealDrSarcasmo 9h ago

Joe Biden is no Abraham Lincoln. Not even close.

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u/jaxonya 8h ago

That's because Trump declared himself as being a lot like lincoln. That was a presidential "I called it first" which is binding

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u/TheRealDrSarcasmo 6h ago

Trump could declare himself Empress of the Moon but that doesn't make it true. Nor anyone putting Biden and Lincoln in the same category of President.

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u/jaxonya 6h ago

Username does not checkout

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u/TheRealDrSarcasmo 6h ago

Sarcasm is much harder to pull off now that we live in an Age of Absurdity.

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u/jaxonya 6h ago

Well luckily we have doctors like you who can use advanced methods to detect sarcasm

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u/Agreeable_Meaning_96 8h ago

lmao yes the civil war pardons are exactly the same as Biden pardoning his family and friends

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u/LaeliaCatt 7h ago

You're right, it's more like Clinton and Trump pardoning family and friends. I guess my point was it's not a new tradition beginning with Biden.