Look, I realize both sides are going to SAY: “We have to do this as a safeguard against meritless vindictive prosecutions; they’re doing it to shield actual serious criminal conduct by allies.” But it does sort of matter that it’s true in one case, and false in the other case.

April 10, 2026 - 20:37 UTC

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I wish the next administration could win solely on helping strengthen democracy by looking at the abuses of power and passing laws (and amendments if necessary) to fix them.
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There should be an award for excellence in false equivalence
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I can imagine the steelman defense that it's not like the prosecutions of Biden allies would have actually resulted in many convictions whereas charging Stephen Miller could ergo Biden's actions were more bad for normbreaking than Trump's were relative to the normbreaking of setting DOJ on people.
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Yep, this is the correct take. 👇

bsky.app/profile/tj-stiles.bsky.social/post/3mj65yhr2q22u
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People should start NOW saying that because trump has placed himself outside the Constitution in practice much of the time and in spirit 100% of the time, he has placed himself outside the power to issue legitimate pardons -- since this is not a constitutional presidency, his pardons are void.
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also and i know this will sound crazy but there's no law saying democrats have to defend Biden's conduct
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“Look, in both cases there was a bus coming and someone pushed a little old lady. Wait, what do you mean that context matters?”
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So preemptively pardoning people being threatened with vindictive prosecutions is equivalent to preemptively pardoning the people who performed the vindictive prosecutions …

No, I feel like people will be able to grasp this one.
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Even if they don't grasp it, why do Dems always have to approach everything in such a defensive crouch? We're right. We should say it with our full chest and then very VIGOROUSLY and unapologetically act accordingly.

(What the fuck is Parker of all people doing making this argument?)
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Is it false in both cases? Democrats aren’t as brazen, nor do they reject election results (yet), but to suggest they’re not also engaging in corrupt pardoning doesn’t seem right. Essentially, the pardon power needs to be removed moving forward, but no one seems to advocate that.
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it matters very much

and turning that fact into something with teeth of any sort seems an insoluble problem
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They absolutely would have tried to kill Hunter Biden in prison and Joe was justified in preventing it
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Dems need to stop worrying about optics
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That's true, but Idk how we ever get off this partisan carousel. They're going to (likely falsely) claim we are doing whatever we (correctly) claim they are doing, there's a whole ecosystem set up to bolster their claims and make it look like a "both sides" problem, and round and round we go.
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Retroactive invalidation [somehow] of this Presidency under the 14th Amendment
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Many such cases of preemptively blaming Democrats for the crimes of the GOP
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