Trump Redux: The Death of Democracy, or Overblown Hyperbole?

[Lucem Ferre]

Yall are too nice for letting steph throw rocks and hide her hands.

[SGR]

Not really. When Trump is basically waiting down a dark alley with a baseball bat, has effectively sent threatening letters, I think Biden's response was the right one: get their protection in before Trump tries to bring the hammer down. If someone called to your house showing a gun on their hip and said "I'll be back later" and someone in power offered to help you, would you not think it right that they did? I know that's really watering down the situation, but the general precepts fit: if your friends or allies are threatened with retribution and you're in a position to help, why would you not? Who cares about the optics, especially if you're leaving office?

You want to talk about shady pardons?

https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2025/0121/1491950-us-politics/

I wanted to add some thoughts to this discussion before I forget (I've been busy lately).

I think what it ultimately boils down to is that the framers have provided the president with the power of the pardon, probably the greatest constitutional unilateral executive authority that there is, as a safeguard against the judicial branch - in cases where they might get it wrong or the punishment decided on a group or an individual is simply too severe. Typically, we've seen the pardon power see its greatest volume of use with either an incoming president (at the height of their political capital and leewway, so to speak) or an outgoing president (their last chance to use it, and likely won't receive that much pushback or even news coverage given the timing). Generally speaking, we accept that the tradeoff for the president having this power and safeguard against the judiciary is that it can (and will) be overused and abused.

Typically, pardons are issued for those that have been convicted of, or at least charged with a criminal offense. That wasn't the case with Biden's pre-emptive pardons - but constitutionally (as far as I'm aware), there's nothing stating he can't issue a pardon like that. There is, as far as I know, really only one clear precedent for it though - that would be Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Nixon resigned of course to avoid what appeared to be an inevitable impeachment (one thing presidential pardons are explicitly not allowed to cover - the other being state crimes, as it's a federal power), and he was never officially charged with or convicted of any crime - and Ford pardoned him anyway to put an end to all of it and (so the story goes) to restore a sense of normalcy back to our government and country in a time of very high tumult. Of course, in that case, we all essentially knew the charges that would be coming Nixon's way (unlike the charges that could have been levied against those Biden issued the pre-emptive pardons for).

If they wanted, Republicans could still conduct investigations into these people - and someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think they could plead the fifth anymore now that they've received a pardon - if they lied to congress during these hearings (and it could be proven that they lied), they could actually be charged with that (because the pardons wouldn't cover that timeframe) - hell, if the people who received pre-emptive pardons got subpoenaed and defied Congress, and didn't show up for the hearings, Republicans could sentence them to jail for that too (as was done to Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon). This is something I've mentioned in a discussion with Lisna before, Stalin's secret police chief Beria (who was a complete scum of the earth asshole) once said: "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime". The people who move in these high circles of power, money and influence - I practically guarantee that any investigation with enough time and will dedicated to it will find something to charge them with. And by the letter of the law, they probably did commit the crime - which certainly doesn't mean the the prosecution was not politically motivated. But while one political aisle will decry it as 'political persecution', the other side (the one doing the prosecuting) will say "No one is above the law".

Now that Biden has set a precedent with these pre-emptive pardons, it would not be shocking to see Trump, in 4 years, issue gobs of pre-emptive pardons for his political friends and family members. By then, he'll have no personal stakes in it, as his political future will be just about as limited as Biden's is now, especially given his age (assuming Trump makes it that far). If nothing changes, taken to an extreme, every outgoing president could issue these kinds of pre-emptive pardons. If you were to make changes and restrict this kind of thing though, and the president could not do that, taken to the other extreme, each successive administration could investigate and prosecute members of the previous administration - they'll all find something to justify the investigation, and then something to justify criminal charges. I'm not sure which extreme would be worse honestly.

Given that the presidential pardon power is enshrined in the Constitution rather plainly and clearly, I believe it would take a constitutional amendment to change/restrict it. That would mean you'd need a 2/3 majority in favor in Congress, and you'd need 2/3 of the state legislatures in favor across all 50 states. That's an enormously high bar. So barring that, unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose, depending on your perspective), we have to learn to take the bad with the good when it comes to presidential pardon power - recognizing that the tradeoff for the check on judicial overreach is that it will (as it has been) inevitably abused, probably in contradiction to the spirit in which the law was written by the framers of the constitution, but not the letter by which it was written.

[DJChameleon]

Presidential pardons only cover Federal crimes, not state crimes. So if any of them committed crimes at the state level, they can still be charged and prosecuted and, if found guilty, sentenced.

Preemptive pardons, when no charges have even been put forth, just make the recipient look shady as hell in my opinion.

I don't think it looks shady especially when you know that Trump is out for revenge and has a hit list.

[Buck_Mulligan]

I wanted to add some thoughts to this discussion before I forget (I've been busy lately).

I think what it ultimately boils down to is that the framers have provided the president with the power of the pardon, probably the greatest constitutional unilateral executive authority that there is, as a safeguard against the judicial branch - in cases where they might get it wrong or the punishment decided on a group or an individual is simply too severe. Typically, we've seen the pardon power see its greatest volume of use with either an incoming president (at the height of their political capital and leewway, so to speak) or an outgoing president (their last chance to use it, and likely won't receive that much pushback or even news coverage given the timing). Generally speaking, we accept that the tradeoff for the president having this power and safeguard against the judiciary is that it can (and will) be overused and abused.

Typically, pardons are issued for those that have been convicted of, or at least charged with a criminal offense. That wasn't the case with Biden's pre-emptive pardons - but constitutionally (as far as I'm aware), there's nothing stating he can't issue a pardon like that. There is, as far as I know, really only one clear precedent for it though - that would be Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Nixon resigned of course to avoid what appeared to be an inevitable impeachment (one thing presidential pardons are explicitly not allowed to cover - the other being state crimes, as it's a federal power), and he was never officially charged with or convicted of any crime - and Ford pardoned him anyway to put an end to all of it and (so the story goes) to restore a sense of normalcy back to our government and country in a time of very high tumult. Of course, in that case, we all essentially knew the charges that would be coming Nixon's way (unlike the charges that could have been levied against those Biden issued the pre-emptive pardons for).

If they wanted, Republicans could still conduct investigations into these people - and someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think they could plead the fifth anymore now that they've received a pardon - if they lied to congress during these hearings (and it could be proven that they lied), they could actually be charged with that (because the pardons wouldn't cover that timeframe) - hell, if the people who received pre-emptive pardons got subpoenaed and defied Congress, and didn't show up for the hearings, Republicans could sentence them to jail for that too (as was done to Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon). This is something I've mentioned in a discussion with Lisna before, Stalin's secret police chief Beria (who was a complete scum of the earth asshole) once said: "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime". The people who move in these high circles of power, money and influence - I practically guarantee that any investigation with enough time and will dedicated to it will find something to charge them with. And by the letter of the law, they probably did commit the crime - which certainly doesn't mean the the prosecution was not politically motivated. But while one political aisle will decry it as 'political persecution', the other side (the one doing the prosecuting) will say "No one is above the law".

Now that Biden has set a precedent with these pre-emptive pardons, it would not be shocking to see Trump, in 4 years, issue gobs of pre-emptive pardons for his political friends and family members. By then, he'll have no personal stakes in it, as his political future will be just about as limited as Biden's is now, especially given his age (assuming Trump makes it that far). If nothing changes, taken to an extreme, every outgoing president could issue these kinds of pre-emptive pardons. If you were to make changes and restrict this kind of thing though, and the president could not do that, taken to the other extreme, each successive administration could investigate and prosecute members of the previous administration - they'll all find something to justify the investigation, and then something to justify criminal charges. I'm not sure which extreme would be worse honestly.

Given that the presidential pardon power is enshrined in the Constitution rather plainly and clearly, I believe it would take a constitutional amendment to change/restrict it. That would mean you'd need a 2/3 majority in favor in Congress, and you'd need 2/3 of the state legislatures in favor across all 50 states. That's an enormously high bar. So barring that, unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose, depending on your perspective), we have to learn to take the bad with the good when it comes to presidential pardon power - recognizing that the tradeoff for the check on judicial overreach is that it will (as it has been) inevitably abused, probably in contradiction to the spirit in which the law was written by the framers of the constitution, but not the letter by which it was written.

Unless there is some limitation to the pardons, I'm not sure about the highlighted. I think there would be a lot of legal debate about that. Might need the Supremes to get involved.

[SGR]

Unless there is some limitation to the pardons, I'm not sure about the highlighted. I think there would be a lot of legal debate about that. Might need the Supremes to get involved.

The limitation would be the timeframe. These pardons don't allow those who received them to go on and commit criminal offenses in the future and be immune from prosecution because of it. It covers past conduct within the specified timeframe. Of course, ignoring a congressional subpoena or lying to congress in hypothetical coming investigations would be a future offense. I highly doubt a case of 'Does President Biden's 2025 preemptive pardon grant me immunity for my defiance of a congressional subpoena in 2027' would go all the way to the Supreme Court.

[SGR]

Trump signs executive order to release more JFK, RFK, MLK assassination files

If the 'files released from the government' implicate the government, I shall be greatly surprised. 

[Buck_Mulligan]

The limitation would be the timeframe. These pardons don't allow those who received them to go on and commit criminal offenses in the future and be immune from prosecution because of it. It covers past conduct within the specified timeframe. Of course, ignoring a congressional subpoena or lying to congress in hypothetical coming investigations would be a future offense. I highly doubt a case of 'Does President Biden's 2025 preemptive pardon grant me immunity for my defiance of a congressional subpoena in 2027' would go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Sure, but the pardons are to immunize against the unknown consequences of any and all actions taken by the Rs. Fauci, Milley, and Cheney would each face a different set of facts, circumstances, and questions.  If lying was a consequence of actions taken by the Rs, it only occurred because of the Rs.

In any event this is a hypothetical and in my view highly unlikely to happen. People with pardons in the bag have much less incentive to lie.

The Rs may be a little more gun-shy with subpoena power if it turns out that there is much substance to this report.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5103976-johnson-subpeona-hutchinson-jan-6/

[Auroras In Ice]

I've drafted up a couple long ranting replies, but I think the key point I would make is that I really don't think Trump's threats to democracy is hyperbolic for a couple main reasons. First is that while you can pull a lot of individual instances where he gets up to something fashy under the microscope, pick it apart, and find reasons to smirk and dismiss it as overreaction or use it as fodder for some partisan "both sides" comparison or make accusations of hypocrisy, it's been a pretty constant deluge of authoritarian things over the course of a decade. There's elements of authoritarianism in every single system of governance. If you want any sort of judicial process, you are accepting some degree of authoritarian force in society. The key is how that is counterbalanced by checks and balances so that power isn't completely consolidated. So, instead of picking a prodding at this or that deranged Trump tweet or getting mired in partisan shit flinging, I think it's more appropriate to look at how Trump has reshaped the GOP into a party that is defined by loyalty to him and stacked the judiciary and SCOTUS with loyalists who clear the road for everything he does. He's now doing the same to the entire administrative state. There's of course been power grabs done by every administration over the years which rightfully deserve criticism and much of which seeded the ground for eventual authoritarianism to grow, but trumps efforts are on a whole other scale of magnitude. He truly has very little functional guardrails to check his use of power and rein him in. In 2016, I think it was more reasonable to be dismissive of Trump's threat. In 2025 I find it way harder to frame this discussion in terms of "hyperbole" where it should be about "why as this political movement somehow, inexplicably, constantly done nazi-esque and authoritarian shit for a decade". For me it seems like a much bigger reach to keep explaining away the same (increasingly obvious) pattern of behaviour. I've also seen this process play out in the rise of the far-right SD party in Sweden (in terms of their path to power, not their actions in power which are quite different than what Trump is up to) and Canada is right behind the US in all of this. The historical and contemporary parallels are glaringly obvious. So, how this question is framed is important and I think the people who try to dismiss all of this are now actually in the position where they need to do a lot of heavy lifting to back that up. Arguments that made sense 10 years ago ring very hollow now. It's very much staring us in the face.

Another thing is that authoritarianism isn't when some comic book villain seizes power and immediately starts sending the jack boots out to kick down doors and drag people away into the night. It's a slow process that systematically normalizes horrible things that a population would otherwise not go along with. It takes a long time to manufacture enough consent for kicking down doors to become acceptable. Sort of like frogs in boiling water, people come to accept the unacceptable as normal. By the time you get the jack boots kicking down doors, the populace is either being held in a tedious illusion of normalcy since their lives may not seem or vibe any different than before, outright cheering it on or playing the role of brownshirts to torment and corral the targeted scapegoats and out-groups, or just looking the other way since it's not their doors being kicked down... yet. Unfortunately, it is door kicking down time. That is happening now. You are there. Frankly, debates over Trump's authoritarianism is pretty much a past-tense only useful for post-mortem analyses of how he got to where he is now.

Also, as a Canadian from Polish ancestors who fled WW2 the continued threats of forceful (economic or otherwise) annexation directed at my country which happens to neighbour the US is... well, this is all becoming a bit on the nose.

[Lucem Ferre]

The policies are becoming more extreme because it's been normalized.

Hate crimes towards certain individuals are on the rise.

Talks of expanding territory.

Exploiting an economic crisis.



One thing specifically that's getting ignored is putting Cartels on a terrorist list.

On the surface it sounds awesome. Cartels are brutal terrorists that perform unimaginably cruel torture on people with no real cause beyond profit. But then you think about how this had been used in the past. Imprisoning, executing and torturing people without due process. Many of the people in Guantanamo Bay were innocent. They tortured people just for having relatives in an organization.

IDK. The forced sterilizations ICE was already caught doing was a bit more than problematic in my eyes & people that thought we were hyperbolic back then were clearly wrong. Now the implications of what they plan to do is down right dark.

[Weekender]

I think everything Trump is doing is indeed that bad and maybe worse. The suffering will be immense. Sadly, in order to stop it now people would need to be willing to face imprisonment, torture, maybe even death. The time to stop it with little to no sacrifice was election day.

Democracy is the exception, autocracy the norm, many people live happy lives in Russia and China. We are not all that different.

[Trollheart]

Unless there is some limitation to the pardons, I'm not sure about the highlighted. I think there would be a lot of legal debate about that. Might need the Supremes to get involved.

What makes you think Diana Ross would have anything to do with it??

[SGR]

What makes you think Diana Ross would have anything to do with it??

Best Diana Ross remix ever opportunity

[degrassiknoll]

Question for the Americans: how are people in your circles responding to things like the nazi salute, the nazis marching in Ohio, etc.? Have you seen much engagement other than shaming the behavior? Is anyone still talking about punching nazis?

I ask because I feel that I am seeing much less of that "not on my street" sentiment, or at least it's less impassioned than 2016 and prior. In 2016 I was writing the numbers to ACLU attorneys in sharpie on protestors arms in case they were arrested at the demonstration, passing out know your rights cards and organized against the presence of ICE in our community.

I'm fearful that the generalized wear-down of the populace is upon us, and the sentiment is now moreso "batten down the hatches" - are we still ready for the revolution or are we so apathetic we're just waiting out the storm? (Spoiler: it's gonna keep raining)

[Buck_Mulligan]

^^^
I think your observations are the mark, and it's also an understandable reaction on the part of the population.  It's partly a weariness, partly a desire not to let Trump live  in your head, and he did win the popular vote. If you can't accept that you're part of the problem.

Plus, the Ds are currently in disarray, unsure what their messaging should be. Opposition just for the sake of opposition is neither good tactics or strategy. Anger is not a policy.

[SGR]

^^^
I think your observations are the mark, and it's also an understandable reaction on the part of the population.  It's partly a weariness, partly a desire not to let Trump live  in your head, and he did win the popular vote. If you can't accept that you're part of the problem.

Plus, the Ds are currently in disarray, unsure what their messaging should be. Opposition just for the sake of opposition is neither good tactics or strategy. Anger is not a policy.

I think Buck hit the nail on the head here. In some ways, after Trump's first victory, and then his subsequent loss to Biden, it was easy to dismiss his 2016 win as a fluke - an aberration in the system due to the rules and electoral college. After his popular vote victory in 2024, it's harder to do so, and easier to see his 2020 loss to Biden as a fluke. In 2024, Americans did not misunderstand what Trump represents or who he is - and voted for him in large enough numbers to secure an electoral victory and the popular vote anyway.

This rather clear outcome should result in a change of strategy and approach from D's, and that's likely what we'll see - and why there isn't as much pushback/resistance as there was in 2016.