Pardo For Blago

The Trump cult likes to believe Donald Trump is a great negotiator. So how do they deal with the fact that he’s been publicly out-negotiated by people like Nancy Pelosi and Kim Jong Un? They pretend it never happened. They were proud of Trump being a billionaire who promised to release his taxes. When he broke that promise, they forget he ever made it. They scream about Democratic Socialists candidates promising free stuff when Donald Trump literally promised them a free wall. Today, you don’t hear any of them saying anything about Mexico paying for it while Trump guts the military for his favorite racist vanity project. Donald Trump promised he wouldn’t have time to play golf. So what do they do with that broken promise and Trump spending more taxpayer money on golf than any president before him? They talk about the amount of golf Obama played.

So, with Republicans, members of the Trump cult, fucknuts, assorted shitweasels, and MAGAts upset over their savior granting clemency to former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, how will they come to terms with this? Blago was their go-to as proof Democrats were corrupt. He was a stain on Obama’s presidency in that he attempted to sell the Senate seat the new president vacated after winning the 2008 election.

I saw a few posts today by Trump cultists trying to deal with it. Some are claiming it’s the height of hypocrisy for Democrats to rejoice at this while calling Trump corrupt. Excuse me, but can someone point out the Democrats who are happy over this? No, fucknuts. Democrats impeached the Illinois governor (in the Illinois House, 114-1. In the Senate, 59-0). The height of hypocrisy is campaigning on draining the swamp and running against “pay for play” then pardoning Rod Blagojevich. The height of hypocrisy is being upset over this only because Blago is a Democrat.

After leaving federal prison, Blagojevich stated he’s a “Trumpocrat,” whatever the hell that is.

One interesting detail to this is that Trump isn’t really acknowledging that Blago did anything wrong. He’s blaming the James “Comey gang and all these sleazebags” for Blago being caught despite the fact James Comey wasn’t FBI Director, anywhere near this case or even the Justice Department (he was in the private sector) at the time of the Blago investigation. Leave it to Trump to blame the “deep state” while pardoning Rod Blagojevich. Trump said, “That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion and in the opinion of many others.” If you have to lie to justify your actions, then you probably did the wrong thing. Blago didn’t just attempt to sell a Senate seat. He was also convicted of a shakedown attempt involving a racetrack and for withholding taxpayer money from a children’s hospital until its CEO donated to his political campaign. Hmmm…who else is all about withholding taxpayer money for his own benefit and would steal from a children’s charity?

Trump didn’t just stop with Blago. He went on a pardon spree. His pardons are focusing on the types of crimes, lying, and corruption his associates have been convicted of in the Russia investigation.

Trump used his presidential pardoning powers on convicted junk bond king Michael Milken and former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik who was convicted of tax fraud. He pardoned Edward DeBartolo Jr., the billionaire former owner of the San Francisco 49ers who was convicted in an extortion case involving the former governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards. He pardoned David Safavian, a senior official in the George W. Bush administration who was convicted of obstructing a federal investigation as part of the scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

There are over 13,000 people currently waiting for a response to their clemency requests, but white-collar white guys who are friends of Trump get to cut to the head of the line. Blago, for example, was on Trump’s fake reality TV show (which probably made federal prison seem like less of a fall from grace after putting yourself into a situation to be judged and graded by Donald Trump). So far, Trump has only granted clemency to one African-American (no, not O.J.), the late boxer Jack Johnson (which was lobbied for by Kim Kardashian). Then, Trump used that pardon in a campaign commercial during the Super Bowl. I guess pardoning a dead black guy is OK because he can’t move into any Republican neighborhoods.

Trump also didn’t go through the normal protocol of reviewing cases suggested by the Justice Department. Instead, he relied on what his friends were saying. Milken’s pardon was recommended by a friend who threw Trump a $10 million fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago Saturday night (by the way. A lot of that $10 million raised for Trump’s campaign will go to Trump. What? You think he’s loaning out Mar-a-Lago for free? Drain the swamp, indeed). Some of these pardons were recommended by Geraldo Rivera, Andrew Napolitano, Maria Bartiromo, Chris Christie, Newsmax Media’s Christopher Ruddy, and Rudy Guiliani, who’ll probably also lobby for his own pardon very soon. Even the Navy SEAL, Eddie Gallagher, who Trump granted clemency to recently argued for Kerik’s pardon, who was a Gallagher defender on Fox News/Trump TV.

The head of the pardon office in the Department of Justice during the first two years of the Trump administration told The Washington Post that he quit last year because the White House had sidelined his office in favor of taking its cues from celebrities, political allies, and Fox News.

There’s a lot of talk in the press about Trump issuing pardons for Roger Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. But I think those will wait until after the election, which will now be supported by fundraisers held by the beneficiaries of these corrupt billionaire pardons.

Donald Trump is not draining the swamp. He’s the swamp’s Santa Claus. And it’s not so much that Trump is pardoning, and talked of pardoning, so many criminals connected to him, but that the president is connected to so many criminals.

So, how will Trump cultists, fucknuts, assorted shitweasels, and MAGAts overcome this pardoning of corrupt Democrat Rob Blagojevich? First, they’ll stop talking about it. And since most of them are former Never Trumpers, by tomorrow afternoon, they’ll be defending it.

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