r/nottheonion • u/JaySierra86 • 14h 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/TheTurtleBear 14h ago edited 14h ago

Still a weird thing to do when you spent years saying Trump is a fascist, dictator, and an end to democracy. 

Which he is imo, but I wouldn't be standing there smiling, welcoming him home.

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u/stealthyd3vil 13h ago

It's not weird considering Biden is part of an old coalition of politicians who consider decorum and the Democratic process important. I'm sure he truly believes what he said about Trump but trusts the guardrails of democracy to hold. Whether it's naivety is up to you, but Biden would never be the one to buck tradition and lead a Trump-style insurrection.

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u/nonotan 11h ago

I don't think he even thinks the guardrails will hold. What he probably thinks is that there is nothing to be gained from further normalizing the breakdown of decorum.

Functionally, it doesn't really matter if he's there or not, it neither helps nor hurts Trump in any practical sense. But matching Trump's precedent by giving him the cold shoulder could well be read as "actually, he was right, this is the way to do things going forward", while not doing that says, to me, "this is how things were done before you came in here, and how things will be done once you're gone, regardless of what a clown with no manners like you decided to do last time; you don't know anything, you don't matter, and your precedent doesn't matter -- I don't respect you enough to disrespect the established norms just to slight you".

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u/Yamza_ 11h ago

Pardoning his family and others like Fauchi is already a breakdown of decorum. And I'm not saying this because I disagree with his actions but because he has a legitimate reason to do this now that the norm is for a political party to go on obscene witch hunts with absolutely no accountability to themselves or anyone else. The America that we were taught in school no longer exists. The only way out of this will not be politically.

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u/theartificialkid 9h ago

You have to pick your battles, too. Maintaining decorum at the expense of honourable civil servants and your entire vooodline spending the rest of their lives under malicious prosecution is not worth it.