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by jiggawatts 106 days ago
> Biden pardoned his son.

Yes, that's bad.

It's not even remotely the same.

Biden pardoned his son to protect him from being hounded for the rest of his life by rabid Republicans that still can't shut up about Hillary's emails (despite Trump doing 10x worse with the top secret files in his toilet), Benghazi (with 4 deaths, far less than the current Iran boondogle), etc...

Trump has weaponised the pardon power, which was previously used by other presidents to pardon people who didn't deserve their punishment. Non-violent drug crimes like possession of a bit of weed, life imprisonment over a technicality, that kind of thing.

Trump instead enables rampant corruption coupled with blind obedience with the promise of a pardon as the get-out-of-jail-free card.

He's also made pardons pay-for-play, letting out crypto scammers, drug lords, and anyone else willing to pay him a few million each.

It's obscene. It's corrosive. It's destroying your democracy, so very very visibly that the rest of the world is staring with slack-jawed horror.

Seriously.

Over here on the other side of the little pond we call the Pacific, we're worried about you yanks.

2 comments

Pacific, or Atlantic… I can’t tell if you’re a Brit or an Australian.
Does it matter?

Our British mates are equally appalled.

The president has full discretionary pardon powers with no check or balance. It was inevitable that the power would be abused. You have an old system bursting at the seams of the maximalist modern world. Trump took advantage of your inadequacies.
Nothing felt inevitable about having such an arch traitor to the US in power. With all of congress turning their backs on America & our constitution, and a Supreme Court rabidly helping him.

There were lots of checks built in. But all three branches of government are bolstering this worship of vice, death, chaos, disease, and suffering

> Nothing felt inevitable about having such an arch traitor to the US in power.

I vehemently disagree. The US has been headed towards authoritarianism for close to a century.