In a hill.com piece written by Marty Johnson on Friday, May 15th 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden said he would not pardon President Donald Trump if elected president. This was yet another reassurance from the former Obama veep, as Biden had made the exact same claim in 2019. On October 14th, 2019, in another Hill article, Biden made the same claim.
Historical “No Duh”
One big obvious takeaway from Biden’s statement is that it’s virtually guaranteed. Even if Trump were found guilty of some crime, Biden pardoning Trump would be a laughable notion. Why? Well, let’s begin with the fact that no president of the opposite party has ever advocated for the pardoning of a former president’s crimes from the opposite party. It’s just not a thing anyone would do unless they were a Republican reaching out to garner Democratic support (and vice versa). If that had happened, we’d be hearing about it. Not only that, but Biden even called for Trump to be impeached! So again, why would someone who wanted the President to be impeached in the first place then advocate for a pardon immediately after that?
No Crime, No Pardon
On September 27th, 2019, Trump Impeachment Defense Lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote an opinion piece for The Hill which ran with the headline, “Why the Framers would reject the Democrats’ impeachment criteria”. I’m not going to make this a “Trump commuted absolutely no crimes and thus deserves no pardon because the impeachment was a hoax constructed by Trump-hating and Republican-hating socialist-lovers and communist sympathizers”. That’s not me. However, Dershowitz superficially said, “An American president, on the other hand, can be removed only if both parties agree that he has violated the stringent criteria set out in Article II of the Constitution”. This was in context to the previous statement that a British Prime Minister can be removed from his office based on a partisan vote of no-confidence.
I feel like I need to explain to you who Alan Dershowitz is in order for you to understand what the significance of him defending Trump is. First, Alan Dershowitz is a lifelong Democrat, a Hillary Clinton supporter, and even said he’d vote for Joe Biden in a Trump-Biden matchup. Mr. Dershowitz is no Sean Hannity or Ronald Reagan; he has never said he would support Trump for re-election, and even in the impeachment trial, said he was not defending Trump because of support, but because he wanted to defend the Constitution. He previously defended Jeffery Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Clinton (three people with ties to Hillary Clinton).
Dershowitz’s argument brought out an interesting point: Even though the House impeached Trump, the vote was not partisan against Trump. In fact, the vote’s result allowed several Representatives to cross party lines. In the vote on Article 1, 229 Democrats and one Independent (Justin Amash of Michigan) voted yea, while two Democrats joined all 195 Republicans in voting ‘nay’ to the first Article. On the Second Article, the vote was slightly more nonpartisan on the President’s side. On the ayes side were only 228 Democrats and one Independent (Amash), while the nays had three Democrats and all 195 Republicans. Tulsi Gabbard voted Present on both counts. This means that the vote supporting the impeachment of Donald Trump was less bipartisan than the vote against Trump’s impeachment. This goes against the quote from earlier, “An American president, on the other hand, can be removed only if both parties agree that he has violated the stringent criteria set out in Article II of the Constitution”. I feel the need to highlight the “both parties” part since it seems that the vote to impeach Trump was strictly partisan-thus not meeting the criteria Dershowitz included.
So that brings up the Joe Biden quote which kicked this whole discussion off again. Why would Joe Biden (who advocated impeachment), a staunch anti-Trump Democrat, and the veep of a Democrat President, even need to address the notion he’d even consider a pardon in the first place? In the original 2019 article mentioned earlier, Biden mentioned “he wouldn't follow the example of former President Ford, who pardoned his predecessor, President Nixon, so Nixon would not be prosecuted for his role in the Watergate scandal”. However, again we need to remember the situational differences: Both President Ford and Nixon were Republicans-not only that but they were friends (in a sense, some might say), and were not at each other’s political opposites. Biden can be considered a “moderate” Democrat (if you listen to the mainstream media), Trump a “moderate” Republican. One supports Planned Parenthood, the other opposes it. One thinks China is a greater threat than Russia, the other vice versa.
The 2019 article mentioned Biden said the statement in a Radio Iowa interview. When reading the original article the interview was linked to, I immediately found a red flag. You see, Biden didn’t just say he was never going to pardon Trump; he also said he would build on the “squeaky clean...environment” of the Obama White House. Now, I previously mentioned I wasn’t going to make this an “evil Democrats, pure-as-snow Republicans” article-I’m sticking to that. However, I feel the need to remind you that the Obama White House, like every White House in history, was not “squeaky clean”.
Now, was Joe Biden over-exaggerating? More than likely. But the point still stands: Biden’s view of the Obama admin is one that is shared by the former President as well: His administration had no scandals. Next, Biden made a promise which would probably have made the Kennedy family, in addition to the Trump family, raise their eyebrows. Biden said, “No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they’re a cabinet, will, in fact, have any a business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or to a foreign country”. Now, as you may well know, John Kennedy had his brother, Robert, as his Attorney General, and Kennedy wasn’t the only one who did such a move. According to a fact check performed by ballotpedia.org, many former Presidents did such a thing, including John Adams, Bill Clinton, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and even Dwight Eisenhower. So for Biden to say he wouldn’t have any family members to serve in an in-house position, sit in on meetings, or have members of his family have business ties to foreign holdings is quite a high bar to pass over.
Biden said, “It wouldn’t unite the country.” Oh, is that what you think? Well, I’d rebut with the idea that Trump’s administration prosecuting Hillary Clinton after his election wouldn’t have united the country. In fact, the absence of the case is, in my view, a possible showing of a willingness to put behind us a turbulent election. Remember, Trump has the power to prosecute anyone he wants, in a sense. Yes, activist judges would attempt to block him, but there are always ways around that sort of thing. So, to say that pardoning a political opponent wouldn’t unify a nation is kind of dumb. It’s dumb because you’re not thinking about the hardcore fans of the opposition-people who will never support your administration, and who will do everything they can to obstruct progress you’re making (in our time we call them the Trump Resistance movement).
In conclusion, Joe Biden’s quote is not only unnecessary, but it is outright dumb. To not want to pardon your opponent, to ‘let bygones be bygones’, seems to be a bad move. It seems to be one only someone who will never want progress to go forward would do, and it seems like the thing the founders would never do. America was built on compromise, and to ignore an entire half of the country through your political opponent’s base seems like a move that will only lose you the election in the fall.
All opinions expressed within the contents of this article reflect the views and values of the author, not Politics NOW.
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