“To everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.” So declared President Biden in his 2020 victory speech, said Marc A. Thiessen and Danielle Pletka in The Washington Post.
Many Americans do not accept the legitimacy of the indictment. About 80% of Republicans view the charges as politically motivated. They see a “troubling pattern”: Hillary Clinton wasn’t charged for mishandling classified material; Trump is being hounded by various prosecutors. For the sake of the nation, the president should pardon him.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A trial “will not bring closure but rather more angst”, agreed Margaret Carlson in Washington Monthly. Already, there have been threats of violence. Kari Lake, hailed as a rising Republican star when she ran for Arizona governor last year, said that to get Trump, prosecutors were “going to have to go through me and 75 million Americans just like me... And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”
There’s no guarantee in any case that a trial would lead to a conviction. The case is being tried in South Florida, where the chances of a “few MAGA loyalists” sneaking through the jury selection process are higher than in Washington DC. The randomly selected presiding judge is Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has been overturned twice in the past for showing bias in his favour.
Trump doesn’t appear to be expecting a pardon from the president, said Jeff Mordock in The Washington Times – and Biden would struggle to get away with such a move today. It would prompt “intense, scathing criticism from within his party” and undercut a key message of his re-election campaign, which is that Trump is “an extremist who poses a threat to democracy”.
Other leaders who have issued controversial pardons have paid a price. President Ford, for instance, saw his poll ratings plummet after he pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974. Biden’s ratings are already low, stuck at roughly 40%. The reality is that he may be in too weak a position to show clemency to Trump, even if he wanted to.
-
Trump officials reinstating 2 Confederate monumentsSpeed Read The administration has plans to 'restore Confederate names and symbols' discarded in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder
-
'This is a coordinated campaign of harassment'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump nominates Powell critic for vacant Fed seatspeed read Stephen Miran, the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers and a fellow critic of Fed chair Jerome Powell, has been nominated to fill a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
-
JD Vance rises as MAGA heir apparentIN THE SPOTLIGHT The vice president is taking an increasingly proactive role in a MAGA movement roiled by scandal and anxious about a post-Trump future
-
Congress should 'step in' to block Trump's White House ballroom makeoverInstant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump's global tariffs take effect, with new additionsSpeed Read Tariffs on more than 90 US trading partners went into effect, escalating the global trade war
-
Eighty years after Hiroshima: how close is nuclear conflict?Today's Big Question Eight decades on from the first atomic bomb 'we have blundered into a new age of nuclear perils'
-
Epstein: A boon for Democrats?Feature Democrats' push to release the Epstein files splits the GOP, sending the House into an early summer recess
-
India rejects Trump threat over Russian oilSpeed Read The president said he would raise tariffs on India for buying and selling Russian oil
-
Israel faces international anger as Gazans starveFeature World leaders pressure Israel to let in aid as famine spreads across Gaza
-
Redistricting: How the GOP could win in 2026Feature Trump pushes early redistricting in Texas to help Republicans keep control of the House in next year's elections
