{"id":30123,"date":"2018-06-05T02:32:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T02:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30123"},"modified":"2018-06-05T02:32:07","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T02:32:07","slug":"self-pardoning-prescription-for-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30123","title":{"rendered":"Self-pardoning: prescription for disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Why in the name of political hyperbole did Donald J. Trump broach the subject of &#8220;self-pardoning&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>He did. The president has declared that he has the authority to pardon himself, but then said immediately afterward that there&#8217;s no reason to do so. Why? He&#8217;s done &#8220;nothing wrong,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>OK, then. I get that, Mr. President.<\/p>\n<p>But I ask again: Why in the hell did he say such a thing in the first place?<\/p>\n<p>Trump is no lawyer. He&#8217;s got a team of legal eagles supposedly helping him wade through the morass that keeps slowing him down. I&#8217;m wondering if the legal team is able to shut this guy up, to persuade him to stop yapping gratuitously on matters of which he has no understanding.<\/p>\n<p>The president has triggered yet another national discussion about his potential criminality. Why? For what purpose? I don&#8217;t understand where this discussion is going and whether Trump is <em>trying<\/em> to instigate a potential constitutional crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The talk around the nation now includes whether the president actually believe he is &#8220;above the law.&#8221; Oh, man. He isn&#8217;t. He ought to know that. His lawyers damn sure ought to know it.<\/p>\n<p>This idiocy about self-pardoning has to presume he has done something wrong.<\/p>\n<p>You know, presidents have been known to take subordinates to the &#8220;woodshed,&#8221; as President Reagan famously did with then-budget director David Stockman back in the early 1980s. I don&#8217;t expect it to happen, but is there anyone close to the current presidential clown who&#8217;s able to take the boss out back to slap some sense into his coiffed skull?<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why in the name of political hyperbole did Donald J. Trump broach the subject of &#8220;self-pardoning&#8221;? He did. The president has declared that he has the authority to pardon himself, but then said immediately afterward that there&#8217;s no reason to do so. Why? He&#8217;s done &#8220;nothing wrong,&#8221; he said. OK, then. I get that, Mr. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30123\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Self-pardoning: prescription for disaster<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1424,6671,4017],"class_list":["post-30123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-presidential-pardon","tag-ronald-reagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30124,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30123\/revisions\/30124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}