There’s another, much smaller, board where I post less often. Most posters are left of center, but maybe 20 percent are Trump sympathizers — enough so that they aren’t going away. And no one on the anti-Trump side is defending this pardon. I suspect the reason isn’t that we are all soft Democrats. It’s that we are wrapped up in debate with real Trumpers. Ours attacks on Trump’s past and coming pardons would lose credibility if we only opposed pardoning family and cronies when their side does it.
Maybe it is like that at CNN and MSNBC. They sense that a big minority of the viewing audience is from the other side, and they cannot dismiss how this looks to the more reasonable among them.
Was Hunter about to be punished more than if I did it, because of who his father is? Yes. EXCEPT — since I do not have a famous father whose supposed influence I pedal, I do not have that kind of income to fail to properly report to the IRS.
I’m not even sure that Hunter’s sale of influence was legal. Is it really legal to sell something that does not exist, or that you know will not be delivered?
Any Democratic member of Congress, from a halfway swingy district, needs to attack this pardon, and will. I see a strong bipartisan push for a pardon-related constitution amendment in our future:
Republicans stopped caring about “lacking credulity” decades ago. The result was control of all three branches of government. Voters want politicians who fight for them instead of worrying about what people who aren’t going to vote for them anyway think about them.
Yes, it’s simply pointless to worry about what such fundamentally unprincipled and dishonest people will think or say. The answer, always, is “whatever gives them an advantage and hurts their opponents”.
Refusing to pardon Hunter would have just made it that much easier to persecute them and if the Republicans bothered to think of it at all they’d have sneered at Joe Biden as being a weakling who didn’t use his power like a Real Man would. They sure as hell wouldn’t have been inspired to restrain themselves in any way.
I’m coming to this thread late, and didn’t read the whole thing. But I just came to say I’m glad Biden did it. At this point he can do no right. Everything he does is going to piss somebody off on the right or the left. He might as well do what he wants in the time that he has left as President. So good for him And go Joe!
Can you think of anything at all that stop them from going after any and/or all that might might score them points on the “HATE-O-METER”? Right now the Democrats are on their Auto-Wrong list, so it doesn’t really matter what they do, does it? This isn’t a case of “A causes B”, but more a case of “We’re going to do B, then assign blame”.
Repeating for emphasis. What is Trump going to do now that he wasn’t going to do before? Was Hunter Biden’s fate a check on Trump’s behavior that has been carelessly discarded? Of course not and it’s absurd to think that it ever was. But Republicans love being able to say “look what you made us do.”
When I heard that the President pardoned Hunter, it was the first time I felt any political uplift since the dumpser fire of an election. Indeed, GO JOE. Screw trump and all his creepy, weirdo, cronies. What a true cluster every one of them is.
I don’t see what all the handwringing is about. So he promised not to pardon his son, that was before an immoral pedophile was nominated for AG then replaced by a boot-licker and a batshit crazy imbecile was nominated to head the FBI. Would any father say “gee, it’s so important that I keep my word that I’ll let my son face a lifetime of partisan prosecution and imprisonment?” Would anyone with multiple brain cells think that his failing to pardon his son would somehow keep DJT from pardoning as many scumbags as he did in his first term? There are 23 months until the midterms and 47 months until the presidential election- this will be long forgotten in the coming reign of terror that’s about to be unleashed.
Is there any president who has not issued at least a couple of pardons some folk considered questionable?
As I’ve said many times before, I’m pretty much checking out of politics/policy, just taking care of myself and my own and hoping for the best. But it is mildly irritating to see the media presenting this in a manner aimed at exaggerating its import, and obscuring Biden’s accomplishments overall, and deflecting from Trump’s overall horribleness.
My preference would be for a statement that, “some folk might think this an improper use of the Presidential pardon.” Followed by a chart listing some of the questionable pardons issued by just about every prior President of either party. But, I guess that wouldn’t sell as many papers/attract as many views…
We had a posts on this after Trump’s first round of pardons in 2020. Pretty much every president has had pardons people objected to. As an example, if Trump pardons the 1/6 insurrectionists then people will compare that to Carter’s blanket pardon of all of the Vietnam War draft dodgers.
Michelle Obama famously said “when they go low, we go high” and we see how well that worked. For once, the Democrats are not guilty of bring a knife to a gun fight.
I think it would be hilarious if Biden pardoned Pelosi, Schiff, Wray, and Gen. Milley. (Except that acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt). But it would be fun to see Trump’s head explode.
He’s got nothing to lose, at this point. He can stand on moral high ground…and watch his son pursued relentlessly by a weaponized justice department, on EVERY level.
Even I can see that Hunter’s never going to get a fair shake, no matter what he did or didn’t do.
I think if any other sane republican president was taking office, Joe would have been true to his word.
He’s an old man who’s served a long and honourable time, standing by and watching his child destroyed by Donald is too much to ask, in my mind.
I’m giving him a pass. The inmates are running the asylum, criminals being elevated to positions of outrageous power.
That is true. I was thinking more about individual pardons, tho. For example, some folk might have objected to Obama’s pardon of Chelsea Manning.
I think it a sure bet that Trump will pardon all manner of scum - including himself, and justify it by saying, “Biden pardoned Hunter!” But Trump would have done whatever he wanted anyway, so no reason Biden ought to have allowed his son to have been persecuted just to take some arguable “higher road.”
It’s not primarily a higher road thing to me. The pardon was a gift to Trumpworld. They will force Hunter to testify. He won’t be able to take the fifth, and they will try to perjury trap him while trying to show that his father was involved in the influence pedaling.
The nicest thing I can say about what Joe Biden did here is that he decreased the chances that they will jail his son at the cost of increasing his own jeopardy.
This relates to something that has been rattling around inside my brain for a while. If we want to have any chance of getting bi-partisan ethics legislation through a senate filibuster Democrats need to start acting unethically. If this works to get some sort of pardon reform, it was worth it.
Again - Manning was not pardoned. Her sentence was commuted to time served.
And for those who say that Biden could not act on a commutation since Hunter had not been sentenced - this is incorrect. Sentencing for all active charges were to be completed in less than two weeks - plenty of time for Biden to issue a commutation or pardon.
Any speculation with regard to the future actions of a Trump administration may well be valid. But these are the facts.
