We don’t know about you, but we don’t want to live in a country where the winner of a presidential (or congressional) election, gets to imprison the loser. There is a special name for countries like that, they are called banana republicans. We grant you that they are not usually decided by free and fair elections (and we don’t really have a guarantee that ours will be, either) but they are decided somehow, someone has more guns, someone persuades the military, something.
Their opponent ends up in jail.
Twice now, Trump’s crowds have cheered on just such a result. They want Biden locked up and right now, they are not even sure of the crime. (At least with Hillary they thought they knew the evidence, she used a personal server for classified documents). All they can name about anything about Biden is something about Ukraine, mumble something about China, Hunter, and millions of dollars. That’s all it takes.
People bellow out "lock him up!" about Joe Biden at Trump's rally in Bucks County, Pennsylvania pic.twitter.com/XdqCKH9wgE [1]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2020 [2]
Meanwhile, should Biden win, there truly may be an avalanche of evidence of crimes so convincing that Trump absconds from the United States. He has hinted at it before. If he doesn’t leave the U.S., there will be investigations. They will have to deal with pardons because Trump isn’t leaving without a pardon, even if he has to make Pence president for one hour, he isn’t leaving without a pardon. But pardons are weird things in that it’s tough to decide what’s proactive versus what covers stuff already charged.
Like Nixon, Ford pardoned him before there was any real investigation or charges in the crimes. But surely, a president can’t be pardoned ahead of time, walk across the street and shoot a rival, and say he has been pardoned, right?
So we do live in a country now where the right definitely wants the left’s leaders’ locked up, and the left definitely wants Trump investigated and charged for his crimes, some he may commit after being president. A price needs to be paid if a president did all he could to milk the system and steal money or make deals for his own financial gain, that can’t be allowed to stand. But absent proof of that, it seems better to let Trump live a life of ignominy in Florida than to get involved in a tit for tat type of pattern.
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak