Unless, it turns out, it’s themselves. Then they’re special. Politico has the report:
After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, President Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact.
“I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.
The pleas for mercy mainly extend to the four former Trump aides who have already been swept up in the Russia probe: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. But they don’t stop there.
“It’s kind of cruel what’s going on right now and the president should put these defendants out of their misery,” said Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. “I think he should pardon everybody — and pardon himself.”
Apparently the principles of punishment and deterrence only apply to the outsiders. For those Party faithful caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, well, we’ll let them slide by.
But I don’t have any doubts – if the same scandals were to happen in a Democratic administration, we know they’d be howling to the moon, crying out for gobbets of flesh torn from the malefactors. And I wouldn’t have a problem with that.
As an independent, I’m simply appalled at the whining from the Republicans as they find out their leader can’t pick good people. This isn’t the behavior of adults – this is the behavior of spoiled children. Children who think this is all a game and they have the Get Out Of Mail Free card.
Unless they think fellow Republican and Special Prosecutor Mueller is just making charges up – and then those under the thumb are pleading guilty because of Mueller’s crazy hypnotic powers – they need to man up and put Country over Party.
For a Party well on its way to theocracy, of course they can’t do bad. Or, at least, God will forgive them. They’re too damn special to have to endure punishment, now aren’t they? The GOP has fallen so far.
