If we put 3x caught pot dealers in for life, a corrupt President can certainly rot alongside them.

The more powerful you are, the more significant the penalties for abuse of that power should be, because the damage you can do is correspondingly large.

Presidential immunity for, say, selling a pardon is very new.

Well, yeah. They learned from Nixon!

Fox News was founded by Roger Ailes with the explicit intent to prevent another Nixon situation. Not the "criminal President" part, mind you; the punished (Republican) President part.

Avoiding responsibility isn't the goal, and shouldn't be possible.

The recent presidential immunity decision just made the downsides way more likely.

No, it was right to consider the possibility that Trump would violate the norms here. Letting the President right unaddressed wrongs is the entire reason the pardon power exists.

His own current Chief of Staff has similar concerns, and grand juries seem to be taking the same position; that these are just revenge.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/us/politics/trump-susie-w...

"Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a “loose agreement” with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”"

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/g-s1-115240/iran-war-strait-h...

(I'm being snarky here, but COVID definitely exposed some supply chain vulnerabilities.)

They may be hoping it goes back up.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-4311-...

> Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

Not quite as long, but much more significant. (No violence exception, the criminal was the President, and they were crimes against the entire country, not some random drug/tax charges.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_S...

> In 2023, Governor Tony Evers used a line-item veto to extend what was supposed to be a two year temporary funding increase for schools to last over 400 years.

https://www.businessinsider.com/wisconsin-tony-evers-400-yea...

> Evers was able to make the nearly 400-year-old addition by vetoing part of a phrase that had referred to the 2024-25 school year, by striking a hyphen and the "20." When read together, the legislature's previous proposals for the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 school years became 2023-2425.

The WI Supreme Court upheld it. What a fucked-up system.

In picture form: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/u...

Yeah, well, they can say that to SCOTUS.

It has nothing to do with the writing. It's the "fuck you we'll ignore" it thing that's a problem. No amount of writing fixes that.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-promises-mass-pard...

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/23/g-s1-111196/uk-peter-mandelso...

While we were having "No Kings" rallies over our elected Epstein co-conspirator, they arrested and demoted a royal family member over it. And a separate lord.