Trump on Parade

If I commented on everything reprehensible in Trump’s weekend rally speech, it would take over this website – for weeks.  So, I’ll ignore most of it, and just briefly note a couple of things, and go into a little more detail on a third.

The first is the utter stupidity of admitting in public that you wanted to overthrow the government.  The best I can figure is that it actually is a Trump body double, and “he doesn’t understand what he was saying.  Either that, or it’s the real Trump and he thinks he can say whatever he wants, and he won’t ever be touched.  Sadly, that’s a possibility.  But I do think it’s foolish thinking on his part to count on that.

The second is Trump calling for violence from his supporters if he is ever indicted.  What stands out from this is that this seems to mean he thinks it’s very possible he’ll get indicted and is concerned by it – which oddly contradicts the thinking above that he believes he can say anything and get away with it.  I also had an odd reaction:  as sick and dangerous as his statement was about this at the rally, I wasn’t as horrified by it as many commentators and analysts – not because I don’t think it’s sick and dangerous (I do), but because I think his fascist supporters would be doing this anyway, even without him telling them to.

And the third was Trump saying that if he runs and is re-elected president that he’ll probably pardon some of the of the people arrested.

While this has understandably gotten a great deal of attention, I don’t think much attention has been paid to how equivocating it is, and that there’s likely little chance of anyone getting pardoned.  Maybe the leader of the Oath Keepers, or someone like that (to keep them on their good side), but even that is questionable.  For starters, it’s not certain Trump will run again – whether by choice or by being occupied in the legal system.  Also, if he does run, it’s hardly certain he’d win.  And if, God forbid, he does run and win, he only talks about pardoning some people who’ve been convicted.  Trump doesn’t care about most of them, we know who Trump is.  In his mind, I suspect he thinks most of them are really stupid which is why they got arrested.  So, we’re down to only a handful, not the many hundreds convicted.  And then even at that, Trump only says if it requires pardons he’d pardon them.  That’s a lot of equivocating, even by Trump standards, especially ending with “if.”  But all that is pure Trump, too – promise anything, make it sound great, we’ll build a ball, we’ll make Mexico pay, trust me, folks, trust me.  He does it when hiring handymen at his home and clubs – get the work done and then don’t pay.  He gets what he wants and screw you.  When running in 2016, he said he’d pay jail fines for anyone arrested assaulting a protestor at his rally – and anyone who thinks he would ever do that is living in another world where Trump cares about you.  So, this is not different.  If he runs, if he gets re-elected, maybe possibly he’ll pardon some people, if it’s necessary.  Sounds great, tastes different.

Related to this, it’s important to note that as good and everyman populist as “I may pardon some of them” sounds to his base, regardless of how empty it is, the reality is that almost all the many hundreds who gets convicted will be out of prison by the time of the next election and next inauguration three years from now.  So, getting a maybe-pardon won’t give these low-level people one less day in jail, it will just say after the fact that they’ve been pardoned – which is still an admission of guilty.  Instead, the people who would be most impacted by a pardon, if it ever occurs, would be the ones still in jail who would be the most highly-criminal.  So…yeah, swell, what a guy.

But most to the point in his faux-pledge is something I’ve only heard rarely referenced.  And that’s that by making this pronouncement, Trump is actually witness tampering.  Because people arrested may decide they don’t have to cooperate because (in their mind) Trump has said he will pardon them.  And that, I think, is the main danger of his comment – though because of that, I hope it’s one more potential crime being investigated. 

I also think that as much as a problem as this is for the justice, it may not play out as badly as it could.  After all, even those who think Trump said he would pardon them still would seem that that’s still 2-3 years away, and they’re only being charge with crimes much shorter than that.  And the most criminal people at the greatest risk are those who understand better than most that all Trump’s equivocating is not something to rely on.  Some will hold out for a Trump pardon.  And maybe conditions will be such that one will come.  For a handful of the very few at the top.  But for almost anyone getting arrested because of their involvement in the insurrection, they are running a fool’s errand on fumes if they think they’ll get pardoned.  And I suspect most won’t think that.  But that some may think it is enough, it would seem, to justify considering a witness tampering charge.

And this is just the short, cursory look at this speech.  So, you now know why I "limited" it to just this...