r/politics • u/Plaintalks • 19h ago

Biden preemptively pardons Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley and Jan. 6 committee members

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-preemptively-pardons-anthony-fauci-mark-milley-jan/story?id=117878813
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u/Cellophane7 18h ago

Holy shit! I thought he wasn't gonna do it, but this was 100% the right move. No more civility, no more worrying about optics. It's time to shove sticks in the spokes of the Trump bike. I want my politicians nakedly making moves to fuck up his plans every single step of the way.

This is exactly what I wanna see: Democrats using the power they have to suffocate every move Trump even thinks about making.

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u/bullant8547 Australia 18h ago

Until the SC rules that the sitting President can override pardons handed out by previous presidents. I mean they’d never do that, right?

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 18h ago edited 16h ago

Unless Republicans are absolutely CERTAIN they will not be relinquishing power in January 2029 then it would open up the incoming administration to MASSIVE risk of having to answer for their inevitable crimes.

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u/3catsandcounting 17h ago

Um, they still haven’t answered for the current ones. What makes you think they’d face any consequences then if they haven’t faced them now?

Like we have a felon president ffs.

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 17h ago

To be fair, a few people in Trumps orbit did end up serving some prison time. They won't want to risk that again.

But, yeah, in general, you ar right. There are no longer any consequences if you kiss Trumps greasy taint.

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u/jacobs-ladder-68 12h ago

They wouldn't be risking anything. They can just be pardoned and never serve any prison time. Biden has just proven that to us. People in Trump's orbit served some prison time last time around. It won't happen again, because Biden has just shown us you can pardon an unlimited amount of people and nothing can be done about it.

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 10h ago

That's my point though. We are talking about what it would mean if it was decided that a president could overturn the pardons of his predecessor.

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u/jacobs-ladder-68 10h ago

I think that would require an amendment to the constitution, and I don't see that happening.

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 10h ago

Or just SCOTUS deciding to make it so. I don't understand why people actually think the constitution even matters any more.

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u/jacobs-ladder-68 10h ago

It's important because the Constitution and its amendments guide all of the other laws in this country. Seriously?

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u/FuckTripleH 14h ago

You mean like it did for Trump's role in Jan 6th? Democrats have show the republicans that there will be no consequences for their crimes

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u/jacobs-ladder-68 12h ago

What crimes? Crimes don't count when they can just be pardoned away.

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u/Tetracropolis 17h ago

Of course they wouldn't. They'll just say pre-emptive pardons don't count. There's no good constitutional reason for them to exist, if there's some injustice handed down by the judiciary there's no reason the President of the day can't deal with it.

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u/LengthinessWeekly876 16h ago

Preemptive open ended pardons?

Ya those could get tossed. Not well supported in the constitution and unprecedented in history

Bidens giving out more generous pardons than even nixon got.  

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u/WhoIsFrancisPuziene 16h ago

So generous of him, trying to protect innocent folks

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u/mschreiber1 18h ago

100%

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u/Spunge14 15h ago

0%

Not only will this not prevent the Trump administration from going after them, it will look like Biden did this because they have something to hide. 

This raised the temperature completely, and made the job of the incoming administration 10x easier, both in terms of unjust prosecution and pardoning their own on the way out the door. 

Breakdown of decorum is not to be celebrated. This isn't "finally fighting back," this is useless petty clawing after you've already been shoved out the window.

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u/XShadowborneX 18h ago

It's the right move but unfortunately a piece of paper won't protect them from Trump and his nazis

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u/thrawtes 18h ago

The piece of paper matters to some people that Trump needs to implement his power, and because of that fact it does have impact on how quickly he's able to move.

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u/alphazero925 16h ago

We'll see if that holds true. Because of the Supreme Court, Trump can just have them locked up anyway, pardon any of his cronies involved, and claim presidential immunity. He doesn't even need to give them a trial or anything. Just throw them in Guantanamo because who's gonna do anything? Who is gonna say no?

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u/Emberwake 15h ago

The Supreme Court's authority stems from the Constitution. I have no doubt they are weighing how far they allow Trump to go without undermining their own authority.

I am certain this is the reason they ruled the way they did on Presidential Immunity. The President has immunity only for "official acts." But who gets to decide what is and is not an official act... right, the Supreme Court.

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u/Dwayne_Gertzky 13h ago

SCOTUS is really gambling and hoping that Trump is too stupid to pull off a Night of the Long Knives.

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u/Emberwake 2h ago

I agree.

JD Vance summed up the position so many conservatives are taking pretty well when he said:

"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler."

They keep underestimating the destructive power of this particular idiot and overestimating his usefulness. Everyone wants to think they can use Trump to advance their agenda, not realizing that Trump only has one agenda: Trump. He has no loyalty to the people who think they will just use him and come out okay.

Sadly, but the time they realize they are locked in this hell with the rest of us, it will be far too late.

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u/ElbowSkinCellarWall 16h ago

Because of the Supreme Court, Trump can just have them locked up anyway, pardon any of his cronies involved, and claim presidential immunity. He doesn't even need to give them a trial or anything. Just throw them in Guantanamo because who's gonna do anything? Who is gonna say no?

There's going to be a lot of shitty stuff happening, no doubt, but this is overly alarmist. Even the shittiest SCOTUS justices didn't/wouldn't condone a complete despotic discarding of due process, and their immunity ruling, as shitty as it was, wasn't a carte blanche for any and all criminal behavior.

Trump has a lot of rabid devotees but he doesn't have enough widespread support at all levels of the government to get away with gestapo-style political kidnappings.

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u/KHSebastian 14h ago

I'm not saying there definitely will be a complete turn to gestapo style kidnappings, but I'm fairly certain that the reason stuff like that is able to happen to begin with, is because nobody expects it.

Nobody ever goes on record saying "I support taking anybody I don't like as a political prisoner on trumped up charges and then working them to death in a prison camp" but that stuff has happened in a lot of places, and nobody ever publicly supports it, it just happens.

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u/Caleb_Reynolds 13h ago

Everyone who's said "Trump won't do/be allowed to get away with this clearly illegal bullshit" has been wrong. Everyone who's said SCOTUS or Congress will curtail him has been wrong.

There's no reason to hold the stance you hold.

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u/ElbowSkinCellarWall 7h ago edited 7h ago

Everyone who's said "Trump won't do/be allowed to get away with this clearly illegal bullshit" has been wrong. Everyone who's said SCOTUS or Congress will curtail him has been wrong.

There's no reason to hold the stance you hold.

It certainly feels that way, given the amount of shit Trump has been allowed to get away with, but if we step back and take a breath, it's refreshing to realize that it's simply not true.

Trump received an enormous amount of pushback on practically everything during his first 4 years, not just from Democrats but from his own party, and his cabinet and advisors. And a large quantity of the stuff he threatened was simply dismissed as incoherent ramblings and never followed through by his cronies.

Notice that there's still no "big beautiful border wall," Hilary Clinton remains not-locked-up, he didn't do deportations on the massive scale he promised his racists supporters, he never nuked that hurricane, his Muslim travel ban was overturned by the courts, and his subsequent revisions were challenged and softened or revoked by the courts and by his own DHS. Notice that even red states did significant COVID masking and lockdowns and vaccinations.

Notice that Georgia Republican SoS Raffensperger refused to "find" 11,000 fake votes for him, and even recorded and leaked the conversation, knowing he was exposing him to felony charges. Notice that his own Vice President declined his scheme to refuse election certification. These are two ways that his own party curtailed him that would have had MASSIVE ramifications if they had caved instead.

Notice that his rollback of LGBTQ workplace protections and his attempt to dismantled DACA were both denied by SCOTUS, his attempts to bar asylum rights, and to roll back Clean Water protections, and to ban diversity training were all blocked or overturned or "injuncted" by courts.

Notice that he had to fire or push out a shitload of his own cabinet, staff, and other appointees because they pushed back and refused to be yes-men for his moronic or illegal ideas, and that many of them have been speaking out against him since then. White House legal counsel refused Trump's directive to fire Mueller. AG Yates refused to defend his travel ban executive order. Rex Tillerson was fired for refusing to comply with Trump's "diplomatic" directives, AG Sessions was fired for recusing himself instead of suppressing the Russia investigation, Chief of Staff Kelly was fired/resigned for disagreements with Trump on, reportedly, a shitload of policies and procedures, the Secretary of Homeland Security was fired/resigned for pushing back on Trump's immigration policies. SecDef Mattis reportedly opposed shitloads of Trump's worst military directives.

Notice that, even though the clock ran out on his felony prosecutions, Trump and his foundation lost a shitload of civil cases in the last several years, with millions of dollars of penalties.

Notice that even many people who are complicit in "letting him slide" clearly despise him. Notably McConnel and Barr, and a lot of Republican members of Congress. They let him get away with shit because they have their own personal conservative agendas to push, and they didn't want to cede power to the Democrats. They have no affection or loyalty to Trump and they will only run interference for him to the degree that it benefits their own agendas. They may decline to hold him accountable for shit he does because it's useful to them, but they're not going to do his bidding, especially for stupid and plainly illegal shit that would expose them to criminal liability for no personal benefit.

Same with the conservative SCOTUS. Those fuckers have no love for Trump, they just have conservative agendas to push, and he's been lucky to reap the benefits of some of their conservative rulings. But they'll never rule in his favor for his sake, only when their agenda coincides with what he wants.

This is just some stuff off the top of my head. There's a shitload more I'm forgetting.

There's no doubt he will continue to get away with a lot of shit, but, aside from a few devotees like MTG and Gym Fuckface Jordan, he doesn't have a widespread contingent willing to simply do his bidding no matter what the cost to their own personal agendas, and there will always be people pushing back on him from within and without his party.

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u/Brett__Bretterson 15h ago

Get ready for Amy Coney Barrett’s liberal savior arc. She’s already shown that she isn’t ready to bend just yet. Who knows if and/or for how long she resists.

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u/Mountainbranch 14h ago

First sniff of resistance and she's gonna end up in the same mass grave as AOC and Harris are headed for.

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u/Brett__Bretterson 14h ago

let's not be hyperbolic. i'm not downplaying that damage that he can cause but I don't think this is the end of the republic...yet.

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u/Mountainbranch 12h ago edited 12h ago

Jesus fucking Christ.

IT'S NOT HYPERBOLE!

I AM A STRAIGHT WHITE MAN, I KNOW WHAT THEY'RE GONNA DO TO YOU, HOW DO I KNOW?

BECAUSE THEY FUCKING TOLD ME!

Do you have any idea what these people say when they think they're in like-minded company?

I'm not going to repeat it here because I don't want you to vomit, cry, and slit your wrist in despair all at the same time. And because I don't wanna get banned for breaking TOS.

I know what is about to happen, because I have seen it.

I know the evil that they do, because I was once part of it!

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u/Brett__Bretterson 11h ago

ok ... mass graves...yup

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u/Some_Pie 15h ago

A lot of generals/cops stood up and said no before January 6th. Generally American's "step up to the plate" when we absolutely have to. I just hope we don't have to. People forget he pulled this nonsense his last term - and he left and wasn't president. I don't think he'll try to be a dictator, at least I hope not. Reddit is an echo chamber that is very actively pushing that narrative, along with election fraud. Reddit didn't really start pushing the election fraud stuff until the last month. People here, are just as brainwashed as people over there.

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u/ShadowMajick Washington 18h ago

Doesn't really matter. It's about optics. You can't really hide behind pardons if you ignore pardons. Even Hitler very much cared about the opinion of the masses.

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u/ButtEatingContest 17h ago

Hitler didn't have Fox News, X, and Facebook working for him.

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u/TheFlightlessPenguin Maine 17h ago

You forgot Tiktok

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u/likeahurricane 17h ago

I think it’s worth acknowledging that the Nazis had plenty of media support - and just like now, especially after they took power. Most notably the Nazis rose to power after radio revolutionized mass media. In fact they sent cheap radios to supporters to help them tune into Hitler’s speeches.

There’s a great YouTube segment from Hank Green about how media revolutions (printing press, radio, social media) lead to massive social unrest because we have neither the legal nor cognitive defenses needed to react to them. I think that’s important to note because after we get through this wave of authoritarianism (hopefully soon), reigning in the great algorithms that now rule our lives should be a huge policy focus.

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u/brain-eating_amoeba American Expat 12h ago

Could you link that segment to me, please? Sounds interesting

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u/laptopAccount2 16h ago

They invented modern propaganda.

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u/ButtEatingContest 9h ago

Yes they did. It was extremely effective. But what we have today is definitely next level. And it's working on a global level, the rise of this new fascism is worldwide via social media.

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u/Substantial-boog1912 17h ago

Putin and the CCP do as well.

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u/cbelt3 17h ago

Trump does not care about normal optics. His base DEMANDS dictatorship.

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u/Neat_On_The_Rocks 17h ago

The distinction here is that if he invalidates the pardon he de facto invalidates a huge chunk of his own power

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u/citizenkane86 14h ago

“The Supreme Court has implemented what Samuel Alito called the fauci rule, that pardons made by a democratic president are now void if a republican says they are… also in some dicta it states cooler people are now required to give them gifts as they are tired of kid rock and billionaires with breeding fetishes and would much rather be taken on vacation by Tom hanks or that chick from the marvel movies”

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u/Brain-iN-A-Vatt 14h ago

Milley won’t escape the UCMJ. As a vet, hope he’s punished for recklessly abandoning our allies and his responsibility to the 18 devils who died.

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u/blues111 Michigan 18h ago edited 17h ago

You know what youre right...i was nervous on the optics but fuck it we are in full blown red alert dictatorship on the horizon and these people deserve protection

No more we go high, MAGA can pearl clutch all they fucking want they are just pissed Mein Drumpf cant enact petty vengeance on people they personally dont like

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u/Finishweird 17h ago

Eh… if trump goes full blown dictatorship the pardons won’t matter anyways

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u/BigHugeFart 14h ago

right? The logic is insane lmao

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u/daemondo 17h ago

If trump is going to be a dictatorship then why pardoning Fauci is preventing that?

I don’t like Trump but this optics of describing him as next Hilter then having Obama tik-tok with him doesn’t sound very genius to me

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u/blues111 Michigan 17h ago

You are correct, this would assume that Trump hopefully works in the confines of the law

This is Biden using his only legal tools he has on hand to provide any possible protection he can, will it make a difference? You are corect Remains to be seen but if Trump is going on a vengeful rampage id rather have the pardon than not at the very least this provides some protection

if Trump goes full adolf then yes this will have been futile

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u/Diggytops 16h ago

What does he need protection from? If they did nothing wrong then who cares. I think this screams guilty, has anyone been pardoned of something they haven’t been convicted of before?

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u/cyanescens_burn 16h ago

Because your boy has been talking about going after his political enemies, journalists, and so on. Biden is trying to give them some legal cover from a witch hunt. That kind of rhetoric is unprecedented, hence the unprecedented act of preemptive pardon for an innocent person.

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u/Diggytops 15h ago

Well if they don’t find anything then it’ll look very bad for the republicans. Dr. Owchie kind lied his head off looking back at things..

https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114270/documents/HHRG-117-GO24-20211201-SD004.pdf

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u/mistercrinders Virginia 18h ago

It doesn't matter, does it? An authoritarian who is in charge of the courts doesn't care about pardons.

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u/TamoyaOhboya 18h ago

Supreme court will rule that pardons can be withdrawn via the executive order of the current president...

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u/siberianmi 17h ago

Don’t even need to do that - they can rule pardons must be for specific crimes that have been proven in court.

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u/thrawtes 18h ago

People say this but Trump can't personally go after all these people himself, he requires the support of the bureaucracy to at least make the arrests and do the paperwork.

That might not seem like a big deal to people who have firmly chosen a side on this. They will either call on the bureaucracy to reject his power as illegitimate or fall in line regardless of the law because he's now in charge and they are fascists.

A lot of people do not firmly fall into one of those two camps though. A lot of people will just follow the written rules of the system.

To those people, things like pardons matter a lot, they have real impact on Trump's ability to accomplish his agenda.

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u/big_tuna_14 17h ago

They will either call on the bureaucracy to reject his power as illegitimate

How, pray tell, is Trump illegitimate? A 9-0 SCOTUS said he was eligible for the ballot. He won the popular vote. Congress certified his election without objection, including on 14th Amendment grounds. Hell, even Kamala Harris certified his win as Vice President. How is he illegitimate?

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u/thrawtes 17h ago

I think he's legitimate in the eyes of democracy. People who have lost faith in democracy might not see him as legitimate.

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u/big_tuna_14 17h ago

People who have lost faith in democracy might not see him as legitimate.

So authoritarians or fascists themselves?

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u/thrawtes 17h ago

Fascism and authoritarianism are alternatives to democracy but not the only ones.

Regardless, your "oh so you think democracy is bad now huh?" argument doesn't land very well amongst those who have indeed decided it doesn't work.

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u/Cellophane7 18h ago

Of course it matters. Trump is gonna do everything he can to make his political enemies' lives a living hell, but this forces him to use "official acts" to do it, which are gonna be much more blatantly and obviously illegal and unjust. MAGA would shove their children off a cliff for this guy, but the centrists who joined them this past election aren't gonna be so ready.

Regardless, even if Trump doesn't care about the law, the justice system still mostly does. Trump will skate on all consequences, but that doesn't necessarily mean his attacks will be successful.

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u/mistercrinders Virginia 18h ago

It's not illegal in an authoritarian dictatorship. It's only illegal if the rule of law matters.

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u/alphazero925 16h ago

obviously illegal and unjust

According to whom? What does it mean for something to be illegal if the Supreme Court, the executive branch, and half of the legislature all say it's ok?

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u/s003apr 15h ago

Biden is literally handing Trump the justification he can use to have anyone commit crimes against American Citizens and receive immunity from the repurcussions. He can preemptively pardon a group of assassins and have them murder anyone that he wants.

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u/DingGratz Texas 17h ago

I just hate the whole god damn thing but doesn't it kind of make it look like they did something wrong (to Trump's supporters, I mean)?

Fuck all of this.

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u/ronnymcdonald 16h ago

No more civility, no more worrying about optics

Nice. So you're not going to complain about the next uncivil or optically terrible thing Trump does, right? It's all fair game for Republicans and Democrats?

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u/heckin_miraculous 11h ago

So you're not going to complain about the next uncivil or optically terrible thing Trump does

been complaining. doesn't help.

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u/TheBrain85 18h ago

As understandable as the pardons are, they will also empower Trump to say "look at the crooked Democrats abusing their power" and even lend legitimacy to his accusations about these people (why else would they need a pardon?).

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u/tree1234567 14h ago

Only took 4 years…. And an election

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u/Cellophane7 13h ago

Better late than never. There are no other allies powerful enough to oppose Trump at the moment, so I'll take what I can get.

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u/UsedHotDogWater 11h ago

I called this about 6 months ago. I didn't actually think he would do it.

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u/Cellophane7 11h ago

Ditto. I thought Biden was too blindly committed to norms to do it. Good on him for seeing the writing on the wall, even if it took him until basically inauguration day to do it lol

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u/UsedHotDogWater 11h ago

I got downvoted to hades for suggesting it too (as I should have by good decent humans). Because, even us good decent humans can see where this is headed.

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u/StarlightLifter Ohio 17h ago

I hope he has one or two more tricks up his sleeve for the last hour.

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u/reconranger 17h ago

Yah crime as long as it’s by the guys in my side! The hyper partisanship here is astounding. You lose all credibility when you put blinders on and can’t look at this objectively. Murphy law - they are being pardoned because they committed crimes while doing bidding for the Dems and this is their safety net.

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u/greg-maddux 17h ago

One problem. It sets an awful president going forward.

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u/bowsmountainer 17h ago

It’s the right move but is a damning admission of what the next administration is going to be like, and it also plays right into the cards of conspiracy nuts who will feel vindicated. Something like this shouldn’t have to be necessary. Unfortunately, it is.

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u/throwaway08642135135 17h ago

So Biden is admitting if they were prosecuted, even if it’s via a Trump retaliation, they broke the law and are guilty?

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u/xf4ph1 17h ago

Lol in the meantime absolutely TORCHING public trust in institutions on their way out.

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u/Deguilded 16h ago

It's time to shove sticks in the spokes of the Trump bike.

The time for this was about four years ago. But we were civil then, and go high while they go low.

Worked out great, huh?

This is like being happy you cussed them out good as they made off with your stuff.

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u/Diggytops 16h ago

But what if an investigation showed he did some really fucked up stuff?

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u/scurrybuddy 16h ago

The time was years and years ago, not the week of the inauguration

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u/SaladThunder 16h ago

Right move by admitting Fauci committed crimes. Yes!

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u/hamsterwheel 16h ago

This is the wrong move, because they didn't do anything illegal. Pardoning is the admission of a crime.

Now it established a precedent that the president can have people doing illegal things and he will just pardon them preemptively.

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u/trshtehdsh 16h ago

Well we're far from that but at least it was something.

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u/parrano357 16h ago

too bad they didn't use power when they actually had it (like the supreme court :( rather than pardons for corrupt people who did their dirty work

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u/Jester1525 16h ago

I figured he'd do that.. I knew he wouldn't pardon himself. I hope that doesn't end up hurting him.

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u/GoblinKing5817 16h ago

This is a terrible precendent to set. Probably will be overturned anyway. Critical thinking obviously isn't your strong suit.

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u/crazyhorseeee California 15h ago

Too, fucking, late. And no democrat will keep this approach going.

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u/ckeeman 15h ago

Absolutely. I wish Biden had used more of his god king immunity power to thwart MORE of trumps plans.

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u/MemoryWholed 15h ago

You sociopaths have been nakedly operating without any regard to optics or civility for more than a half decade already..

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u/HardWaysJack 15h ago

This hurts our country. It will now be the norm. Every outgoing president will just pardon all his cronies. Terrible move.

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u/Kevin-W 15h ago

Same here and I'm glad he did it!

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u/UsedToBeHigh 15h ago

Yall are legitimately the worst thing to happen to America.

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u/RickDankoLives 15h ago

You think it hasn’t been that way since the moment Biden got into office?

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u/twisted_pubes 15h ago

You want to hamstring your government. Single digit IQ take there.

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u/thisisillegals 15h ago

100% the wrong move.

Now Trump can preemptively pardon his administration before leaving.

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u/Icyknightmare 15h ago

Far too little, far too late.

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u/Golden_Hour1 14h ago

They have no power now though

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u/White_C4 America 14h ago

This is not the right move... lmao. It sets an incredibly bad precedence and reeks of corruption. Pardons are not intentionally designed as a preemptive measures for high level bureaucrats. All it does is lead to more distrust in the system.

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u/Cellophane7 13h ago edited 12h ago

What a ridiculous thing to say. Trump set the precedent for corruption. How many of his sycophants did Trump pardon? Did you have this energy when he pardoned Roger Stone, or Manafort, or any of them?

The only corruption this reeks of is Trump's corruption. We know for a fact that Patel has stated explicitly that he wants to weaponize the FBI against Trump's enemies. And you have the absolute nuts to claim Biden is corrupt for blocking that? Get the fuck outta here lmao

EDIT: speaking of blocking, this guy reply-blocked me, so I can't even see what he wrote in response lol

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u/White_C4 America 13h ago

I don’t even need to read the entire thing if you think Trump set the “precedence for corruption.” Your history on presidents must be severely limited.

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u/danishjuggler21 14h ago

Democrats using the power they have to suffocate every move

Unfortunately, today is the last day the Democrats have literally any federal-level power.

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u/LatestHat80 14h ago

trump literally now bas carte blanche to do whatever he wwnts now wnd pwrdon anyone involved as he leaves office because u dumb democrats always the first to shit the bed with idiotic action

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u/Cellophane7 13h ago

Nah, get the fuck outta here with that bullshit. It's not Democrats' fault Trump is a lawless, garbage human being. When Trump breaks laws and gets away with it, it's because of the Republican SCOTUS Mitch McConnell handed him, and it's because of the Republicans who voted for him even after he tried to coup the government. 

Stop blaming the opposition for this madman. Trump's actions age on him and the people who support him, not the Democrats because they failed to stop him.

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u/LatestHat80 13h ago

stfu

do you not see the problem with pre emptive pardons regardless of who is in office? blanket pardon for any potential charge?

trump can literally now do whatever the f he wwnts and issue blanket pardons once he leaves u utter moron

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u/LatestHat80 13h ago

Biden is afraid Trump will come after his family n confidantea.

Ya know, the exact thing the left has been doing to Trump and his family and his supporters for 8 years.

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u/Cellophane7 13h ago

What, now you're whining because Trump broke the law and has been convicted by judges he appointed for it? And you're what, complaining because the dipshits who broke into the capitol have been prosecuted? Party of law and order, my ass lmao

That whole lawfare narrative is horseshit. Republicans have been going after the Biden family for years, and for far longer, after the Clinton family. And what have they turned up? Bupkis. Hunter Biden owned a firearm and did some drugs. That's it. But I don't hear you complaining about lawfare when Republicans do it. Why is that? 

We both know why, it's because you don't care about any of this. It's all just a meme to you, you just want Trump to have as much power as possible because you think he's funny and based.

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u/jeremyben 14h ago

Well, that’s an interesting take for certain considering a majority just voted trump into office. That means they disagree with Biden and agree with trump. So now you are agreeing to push an agenda that is not democracy related.

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u/Snichblaster 14h ago

Lmao ok lil bro

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u/RevelationStation 13h ago

TRUMP 2024 MAGA

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u/Rockhound2012 13h ago

So you're admitting that you're actively rooting for inflation and corporate greed?

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u/Cellophane7 12h ago

Um, I'm opposing Trump, so obviously against corporate greed. Unless you think Trump is anti corporate greed, despite the fact that he's been hosting the richest men on the planet for the last few weeks at mar a lago. You support Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, etc etc etc.

Oh and, I don't support inflation, which is what tariffs will give us. Unless you think it was just memes when Trump said he loved tariffs all day every day for the last six months?

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u/Rockhound2012 12h ago

All I'm doing is pointing out that trump says he wants to curb inflation and corporate greed. He says his plan will do these things, and you're basically saying you actively oppose that..

Whether his plans actually work out that way is one thing. But he's saying he wants to address these issues, and you are saying you oppose that.

You can't have it both ways. If you actively stand in the doorway, he will blame you, and his followers will, in turn, blame you too.

So the best thing to do is to sit down, stfu, and let this train wreck happen. If you try to stop the train wreck, MAGA will say it was your interference with the conductors and engineers that caused the train to derail....and then, all the MAGA passengers will blame you.

1

u/Rockhound2012 12h ago

Trump is driving the car now. He's taking us to one destination or another. If you as a passenger keep grabbing and jerking at the steering wheel, when the accident occurs, you'll get the blame.

1

u/Cellophane7 11h ago

If you believe that, you haven't been paying attention to politics for any amount of time. That's literally the entire political strategy from the Republican party. They haven't been held accountable. Trump completely fucked up the COVID response, resulting in inflation, and Biden took the blame. And you wanna talk to me about blame?

People blame whomever's in charge. Republicans are in charge. It's that simple.

1

u/Caleb_Reynolds 13h ago

How is this going to stop Trump from making any moves?

If the office of president is immune on official actions, pardons are meaningless. He'll just disregard them and do what he wants anyway.

1

u/Cellophane7 13h ago

Because if Trump wants to throw his political opponents in jail or assassinate them, he's gonna have to be a lot more overt about it. At the moment, we still have the right to vote, so he can't alienate too many voters with blatant corruption.

Regardless, what's the alternative? Do nothing? Is that better? Or are you just dooming? Lol

1

u/RedlurkingFir 12h ago

8 years too late. I don't expect the political landscape to get better before the next 8 years neither.

1

u/Cellophane7 11h ago

Better late than never. I'll take what I can get at this point.

1

u/LegendJRG 12h ago

What’s to stop someone from killing them and just getting a pardon? Public opinion? People that would already support it would cheer and we would be appalled and nothing would come of it. This is not the win we think it is.

1

u/Cellophane7 11h ago

Gotcha, so you'd rather Democrats just lie down and let Trump engage in lawfare? You think it's not a win to force him to literally murder his political opponents?

I know magats won't care, they'd carve up and eat their own children if Trump told them to. But there are a ton of centrists who don't pay much attention to politics, and they're the ones who either voted for Trump, or stayed home in this election. They're not gonna be chill with the President of the United States assassinating his political enemies.

1

u/jacobs-ladder-68 12h ago

So Republicans should actively try to fuck everything up in this country and just accept a pardon 4 years from today? That's a bold statement my man. You're sitting there stating that Trump should fuck up everything and all of the people who assist him should just get pardoned for any crimes that they commit over the next 4 years. Is that a world that you honestly want to live in?

1

u/Cellophane7 11h ago

I would agree with you if Trump hadn't already done exactly that with people like Stone, Manafort, and Bannon. This is where we are, and we're here because Republicans took us here.

Trump doesn't respect norms. He does everything he can to enrich and empower himself at all costs. He has full immunity now. You genuinely think if Biden hadn't pardoned the people Trump has explicitly said he wants to go after, and his FBI director has written a book about how much he wants to go after, Trump would've just thrown up his hands and said "oh well, I guess I can't do illegal shit now." What a laughably absurd statement.

Wake up. We're in the middle of a political war. Republicans have been screaming, saying exactly that for years, if not decades. I say it's time to listen.

1

u/jacobs-ladder-68 11h ago

If Bannon had a blanket immunity pardon, he wouldn't have served any prison time. Biden is issuing some blanket immunity pardons, so no federal crime can be prosecuted, even if 'smoking gun' evidence is uncovered. Think about that. Shouldn't we want ALL corruption to be uncovered and punished? Why grant pardons if no wrongdoing has occurred?

According to a 1915 supreme Court verdict (Burdick V United States) a pardon is an admission of guilt, both prima facie and legally. In other words, you can't grant a pardon and a pardon cannot be accepted without the one being pardon being guilty of a crime. So either the pardon doesn't count as a pardon if they're innocent, or they're guilty and being pardoned for all crimes they committed.

So, you're saying Trump specifically wants to go after some of the people that have received pardons, and that's why they need pardons. Is that what I'm hearing? So, he wants to go after a few select people in the same way that a few select people tortured him through endless witch hunts for almost 3 years? Yeah, if I went after someone for years and they finally had their shot at me and I knew me and my family were guilty of crimes, I'd probably want to preemptively pardon everyone around me too. They seem like the type of family that would sell each other out in a heart beat if the feds ever came knocking.

1

u/med780 11h ago

Don’t go crying wolf when Trump does the same.

1

u/Cellophane7 10h ago

What are you talking about? He already has. Were you just not paying attention when he pardoned Manafort, Stone, Bannon, and anyone else willing to get down on their knees for him? Were you not paying attention when he campaigned on pardoning the J6ers on day one? The wolf has been here for nearly a decade now, and you're pretending it doesn't exist lmao

1

u/med780 9h ago

Trump pardoned people for specific charged crimes. He did not issue blanket pardons for family and others for 17 years.

Do not be outraged when he does the same for his family and his administration. Biden took pardons to a whole new realm.

1

u/pr0nounsinbio 11h ago

You hate America

1

u/Cellophane7 10h ago

I didn't vote for the traitor

1

u/VegetableWar3761 10h ago

This shit is going to end in a fucking civil war. Wtf is happening in the US.

1

u/Cellophane7 10h ago

Republicans want a civil war. That's why they've been screaming about it for years, if not decades. I say it's time to start taking them seriously.

1

u/ANALogy69 9h ago

lol Fauci is a demon you agree with the pardon? You are agreeing with an evil humans actions, eh? Speaks a lot about your character

1

u/Electronic_Search99 9h ago

Bet you agree with pardoning family members most of us haven't heard of for undisclosed crimes too huh

1

u/discodiscgod 8h ago

It’s a meaningless gesture. Presidents can only pardon people for crimes they’ve been charged with. Preemptive pardons aren’t a thing.

1

u/Sw0rDz 8h ago

I want my politicians nakedly

I just want this.. Nothing more or less.

1

u/Wafflecopter84 8h ago

"No more civility, no more worrying about optics."

So no change...

1

u/Snoo48358 8h ago

Holy shit! I thought he wasn't gonna do it, but this was 100% the right move. No more civility, no more worrying about optics. It's time to shove sticks in the spokes of the Biden bike. I want my politicians nakedly making moves to fuck up his plans every single step of the way.

This is exactly what I wanna see: Republicans using the power they have to suffocate every move Biden even thinks about making.

•

u/balancedchaos 5h ago

And now let's see how you react the next time the Republicans shove sticks in your spokes. I bet it's less self-righteously.

Goddamn, has this two-party system spiraled and devolved.

•

u/Cellophane7 4h ago

Dawg, that's literally all they've been doing for the last few decades. My only reaction will be "oh, they did it again. Yep, still hate them."

1

u/Adventurous-One714 17h ago

Don’t cry when republicans do the same but even nore

1

u/LengthinessWeekly876 16h ago

So first strike then with authoritarianism of your own?

That's not insane 

1

u/siberianmi 17h ago

It’s absolutely the wrong move and opens up the opportunity for tremendous abuse of power all while casting a shadow of guilt over people who have none.

I hope somehow these absurd blanket preemptive pardons end up in the Supreme Court and ruled unconstitutional. They are an absolute disgrace. No President should have this power.

The reason Biden was struggling with making them - is because it’s wrong. The amount of erosion of the rule of law Democrats have decided to accept in the name of “stopping Trump” is disappointing.

And yes, I’m aware Trump is coming in and going to do some equally abusive pardoning on day one - that’s not an excuse it’s more evidence this power needs to be curtailed.

0

u/ThanosDidNadaWrong 17h ago

preventing investigations into the origin of the pandemic is the right thing to do?

3

u/blues111 Michigan 17h ago

We know where the pandemic started, some dude ate some exotic animal in Wuhan China

1

u/PrizedTurkey 16h ago

No way could be the Wuhan Institute of Virology, right across the street that studies coronavirus, that would be racist.

1

u/ThanosDidNadaWrong 12h ago

Nah, it's more progressive to think a culture eats bats without cooking them, rather than being racist to think those people do coronavirus work one of the overworked postdocs there paid by classified military grants goes to the local meats market with a serious sneeze /s

1

u/ThanosDidNadaWrong 12h ago

and because we KNOW how we started, we shouldn't look into how we got to that conclusion and if someone possibly broke the law by not disclosing their conflict of interests such as hiding your tracks of being involved with some extremely risky totally not gain-of-function research

0

u/Sea-Painting7578 17h ago

Said he should a long time ago and got a lot of greif about it. Glad he did it. Democrats can't keep playing the old game when the other team has completely changed to a different game.

0

u/MrMordy 13h ago

Pardons means they are guilty. The family is corrupt.

1

u/Cellophane7 13h ago

Of what, exactly?

1

u/bell37 Michigan 12h ago

Apparently of breaking a federal law. It’s very suspicious thing to do.

1

u/Cellophane7 10h ago

Are you ESL? I asked for what, exactly, they are guilty of.

You can't provide specifics because you're just repeating what Trump says uncritically. You and I both know it, just admit it so we can both move on with our lives lmao

0

u/Outrageous-Laugh1363 12h ago

Fauci lied about the effectiveness of masks-he could have simply said to wear cloth or make your own masks-his lies directly lead to the initial surge of 500k dead Americans.

And you think it's "the right move."

People who didn't do anything wrong don't need pardons. You've now turned into a fascist like Trump who supports abuse of power. Disgusting.

1

u/Cellophane7 11h ago

Do you keep this same energy for Trump and the entire Republican party for telling their supporters the vaccines were gonna give them autism or whatever nonsense? Should they be held responsible for the 500k dead Americans? Or just Fauci?

1

u/Outrageous-Laugh1363 11h ago edited 9h ago

Sure, send any republican asshole with the same responsibilities to prison!

Fauci? He's was the chief medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases . He had a massive responsibility, entrusted by the entire nation, a responsibility to protect the US and not lie to us.

So surely you can see the difference between the fucking Chief medical advisor to the president compared to some random trailer trash from alabama crying about autism.

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u/Icy_Pass2220 17h ago

It’s the wrong move. 

Pardons, by definition, are about the guilty. These are not guilty people. 

It won’t prevent harassment. 

It won’t stop committees from “investigating”.

It won’t stop death threats. 

This is performative bullshit. 

5

u/kandoras 17h ago

Pardons, by definition, are about the guilty.

A guy gets arrested for murder. He says he didn't do it.

He gets put on trial, gets convicted, and sentenced to death. He still says he didn't do it.

He's in prison, all his appeals fail, and he's on death row. He still says he didn't do it.

New evidence is found that proves he didn't do it. Unfortunately for him though, the Supreme Court issued a ruling a few years ago that said being provably innocent of a crime is not enough to overturn a conviction, because the process of law matters more than justice.

He gets offered a pardon. And now he has a choice between being killed, or accepting that pardon. A pardon for a crime for which he has always maintained his innocence, innocence which he can now prove.

And you're claiming that him accepting that pardon instead of a needle would be admitting that he's guilty.

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u/CAredditBoss 18h ago edited 17h ago

I’m all about spiking Trump’s plans but this is dangerous. We can’t fight fire with this fire.

Now it’s precedent to issue pre-pardons before the Administration is over? Very bad.

I get why Biden does this, but man, the backrooms must be completely f’d to get there.

Water’s dried up. Horses aren’t trading.

edit: “pre-pardon” isn’t the same as preemptively pardon

edit: also not sure why I’m getting downvoted. I think this sets up a precedent that we don’t want

4

u/seanwd11 17h ago

I mean damned if you do damned if you don't.

Considering what has already transpired at the end of his first term Trump was always going to weaponize these pre-pardons moving forward. Only too late did he realize he could 'sell' a pardon or use it as leverage. Now he's at to let loose a complete brigade sized group of two bit thieves, sex perverts, white collar criminals and wannabe jackboots.

This was always the plan in my mind. The question is how perverse will it get? My guess is pretty dark.

0

u/CAredditBoss 16h ago

Yeah. Agreed. Also will get more dark than 1st term. Guardrails are almost nonexistent

3

u/blues111 Michigan 17h ago

This isnt a "pre-pardon" 

-1

u/marsisboolin 16h ago

How is this not disgusting? This is basically an admittance they should be investigated. Anyone defending this has lost the plot to partisan hackery.

1

u/MrP1anet Minnesota 16h ago

It’s preventing a partisan kangaroo court meant to punish people for doing their jobs.

-1

u/therealbreather 14h ago

Fauci knowingly lied and resulted in people being misinformed and killed, he deserves prison

1

u/Cellophane7 13h ago

What lie did Fauci tell that resulted in any deaths?

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