Donald Trump’s wave of pardons of his cronies, accomplices, and, soon, relatives, reeks of putrefaction. It is the stench not merely of a lame-duck administration—after all, presidents have abused the pardon power before—but of a long-dead duck, swarming with maggots, viscera staining the Oval Office carpet, parasites devouring the corpse.
In other words, Trump has found his perfect match.
From his first pardon, of the vicious, racist, fascistic criminal Joe Arpaio, through those he doled out Wednesday to the likes of Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, to his last, which will presumably be a preemptive one of Donald J. Trump himself, he’s shown an utter disregard of the original constitutional purpose of the pardon power (so much for “originalism”), and a perverse delight in exercising one of the presidency’s rare unlimited powers, all while owning the libs.
