Joe Biden should pardon Donald Trump. There are many reasons to do so — legacy, magnanimity, and governance. There is also… revenge. Nothing would better pay back the Democrat elite who did Biden in.
Still trying to process the Nov. 5 seismic shock, it’s easy to forget that President-elect Trump still faces four criminal cases. While all are in a sort of limbo, all are still there. Considering that several Democrat governors have already pledged to defy an administration that won’t be in office for another two months, expect Democrats to resume their lawfare strategy — either through these four cases or others.
Biden should therefore pardon Trump. Now. Last week, in their cordial two-hour meeting, Biden spoke about a smooth transition; nothing would make it smoother than a full presidential pardon as that transition gets underway.
For starters, it would be a gracious gesture, a signal that the time for campaign rhetoric is over. It would also be good for Biden’s legacy, which has suffered increasingly over the last four years. It would atone for some of the vitriol Biden himself has unleashed on his former opponent — and his opponent’s supporters. And it would be good for governance too: removing the specter — at least in these four cases — that presidents can be legally pursued for acts in office.
A pardon would also be fitting revenge for what Biden has suffered at the hands of the Democrat elite.
It is tempting to say that Biden owes the Democrat elite nothing. However, he actually owes them for quite a lot. And that debt stretches back, long before this summer. (READ MORE: Democrats Double Down on Elitism)
In 2016, despite two terms of loyal service as vice president, Obama denied Biden his support for the Democrat’s presidential nomination, instead passing him over for Hillary Clinton. Four years later, Biden was the Democrat’s perpetual other choice in the race for the presidential nomination. After Biden secured the nomination, his curious choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate — the contender who failed first but only after flaying him as a racist in a debate — seemed a sop to the Democrat’s woke sensibilities, even as the elite needed Biden’s moderate image to sell their party to America.
Once in office, Democrat elites demanded lefty policy after lefty policy, even as these drove Biden’s popularity downward and made him all the more dependent on the left.
Of course, all this pales in comparison to the Democrat elite’s unprecedented coup this summer. Despite being the incumbent president and having won the nomination again, Biden was turned on and ignominiously turned out by his supposed political allies and the establishment media. Who knows what threats were made to drive Biden out, but assuredly Biden does. And remembers.
As Biden watched his legacy suffer, he also had to watch as Kamala Harris was coronated in his place. Harris’s total federal experience barely equaled just one of Biden’s six Senate terms; she had never run in a single presidential primary, let alone won one. Biden had to watch as the establishment media who drove him out went gaga for Kamala. He had to watch as money flooded her coffers and A-list celebrities crowded her rallies. Then he watched as Harris went down in defeat to a man he had beaten four years earlier.
And now, having given Harris the nomination and watched her lose, Biden must endure calls by some for him to step down from office to give Harris the presidency itself. While with others in the Democrat elite, he must listen to them blame him for Harris’s loss.
Biden has had to endure much from the Democrat elite over the last eight years and especially the last four months. What better payback for those who stabbed him in the back than to pardon Trump now? Because the Democrat elite will resume their lawfare campaign as soon as they can. This will resume as guerrilla legal actions and full-frontal assaults — as they did after the 2018 midterms — if they regain power in Congress. With the stroke of a pen, Biden could undo all this and all those who undid him.
A Biden pardon of Trump works on many levels. It would enhance a legacy now tarnished. It would make him look above politics — a plus for someone who has been mired in it and besmirched by it.
There are many reasons and many justifications. But Biden doesn’t need another beyond the one that the Democrat elite have given him in spades, and over many years. It would be the perfect Parthian shot as he prepares to leave the White House that Democrat elites have done everything to drive him from.
Revenge is said to be a dish best-served cold. Nothing would give Democrat elites a better taste of their own medicine than a pardon of Donald Trump — because nothing would leave a more bitter taste in their mouth.
READ MORE from J.T. Young:
Democrats Double Down on Elitism
What the ‘Garbage Controversy’ Says About Democrats
Americans’ Justified Media Mistrust
J.T. Young is the author of the new book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, and OMB, and representing a Fortune 20 company.
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