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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   29587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Trump announced in a post last night that he was considering voiding the last minute preemptive Biden pardons of Fauci, members of January 6 House committee, and others, because an "autopen" was used to sign the pardons. Presidential authority to grant pardons is very broad, and apparently autopen has been used by prior presidents; looks like a losing case if it goes before the Supreme Court.

It's not because of the autopen, it's because of the accusation that Biden was too incapacitated to even know it was happening. That the broad authority to grant pardons was not, in fact, being exercised by the president at all. And I for one would love to see Biden deposed about, well, anything having to do with these pardons and see what he remembers.

If Trump invalidates these pardons, what do you think is going to happen to his own pardons when the Dems return to power?

Nothing? Trump is not invalidating anything, because if the allegations are true, the pardons were never valid legal instruments to begin with. If the allegations are true, the President did not issue any such pardons, and since the President is the only person who can issue pardons per the Constitution then no such pardons exist (and also some staffer is guilty of fraud, forgery, and a large number of other crimes).

Trump has talked extensively about his pardons, and is on camera signing (and posing with!) the relevant documents.

I've already seen how this goes. President Trump signed an executive order banning men from women's sports. He made the signing into political theater by having girls crowd round his desk as he signed, giving away the pens that he used, and making a show of making the signature extra special.

He will do the same with his own pardons, giving a little speech about each pardon, condemning the corrupt legal system, and boasting of putting things right by exercising his power of pardon.

Then what? There may be a precedent of voiding pardons that were (a) auto-penned (b) President Biden doesn't step up to say "I commanded that, it is not a case of some-one else borrowing the auto-pen to create a fake pardon behind my back." Such a precedent cannot be used to void a pardon personally signed by President Trump as part of broadcast political theater.

The presumption in the West ever since Augustine is that acts of official power derive their efficacy ex opere operato. The official acts of the president derive their authority not from the president personally, but from the constitution.

If he goes through with it it's great politics.

Regardless of the outcome it puts the news cycle on track to have to defend Biden's antics in the future or at least remind everyone that they happened, and even if Biden survives until it becomes an issue it won't be in a state amenable to his own defense.

The risk is that beating on a defeated old man alienates people who would want to talk about something else than old men grudges, but given Trump's also been pretty energetic about doing stuff this time around, it comes off more as a victory lap.

Long term, I'm not sure it's a good move to start questioning the legitimacy of presidential acts after the fact though. Especially pardons.

What is also looks like is Trump trying to find a way to punish his enemies for investigating his attempted coup.

Unfortunately, this probably won't hurt him all that much politically (much like his actual attempted coup).

  • -10

this probably won't hurt him all that much politically

Then why is it relevant?

Or punish his enemies for making shit up.

The risk is that beating on a defeated old man alienates people

I don't know about the country at large, but after 2021's vaccine mandates and milk raids, there is a sizable chunk of rural PA/WV/KY/TN that loathes Biden with an unrelenting intensity that I cannot adequately describe in human words. That particular demographic isn't going to get sick of it anytime soon.

Why were the 2021 "milk raids" a big deal?

'This particular demographic' is the Amish.

It wasn't only the Amish directly, even if they were the primary targets. For a lot of people, seeing swat teams raiding their neighbors' barns was the first time they'd ever really been forced to actually look at government overreach in a way that they couldn't ignore or rationalize.

Long term, I'm not sure it's a good move to start questioning the legitimacy of presidential acts after the fact though. Especially pardons.

Certainly there should be some time limit on it; I don't think ~3 months is too long though. If "Presidential pardons" were being issued without the actual approval of the President, that's just plain illegitimate. I doubt Trump can prove this is the case, however.

If Biden's staff was idiotic enough to write down that they were taking actions without the assent or against the wishes of the President maybe the acts in question can be held to be fraudulent, but that's as far as this could ever go.

I very much doubt you could hold acts by an incapable president as void if they were taken before let alone without the invocation of 25a by the VP.

I very much doubt you could hold acts by an incapable president as void if they were taken before let alone without the invocation of 25a by the VP.

I would agree, I said just that elsewhere. But Trump is alleging Biden wasn't even involved, which is a very different matter:

In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime

Without some kind of paper trail, this is going nowhere because all that need to happen is the staffer says "Biden told me to do it" without Biden contradicting him.

I don't know who this mythical normie is that would be offput by doing a victory lap on Biden's demented half corpse. You are basically plugged into the MSM narrative and have forgotten all the gaslighting about Biden being "sharp as a tack" and the hilarious lies about him running circles around people at the White House, or you have a memory longer than a goldfish are are furious. There is not a lot of in between.

Well, I guess there are the liars who covered up his dementia for 3.5 years and are now writing books about the coverup, like they weren't a part of it.

A lot of people would rather the government focus on policy than on scandals. They don't care about Biden's dementia or the J6 Committee's conduct; they care about what Trump can do for them in the here and now.

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