Who Will Trump Pardon Before He Leaves Office?
In this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast do a Q&A to answer your most burning political questions.
Illustration by The Daily Beast
The end of the Trump administration is like the end of a season finale of the most batshit Netflix show. Everyone has questions on how it will finally end, including one big one: Will Trump pardon himself before leaving office? Will he pardon others? Some theories predict VP Mike Pence could assume the presidency for just enough time to pardon Trump. But, Rick Wilson doesn’t see that happening.
In this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Rick and co-host Molly Jong-Fast do a Q&A with producer Jesse Cannon to answer some of these burning questions about the Trump administration and their performance as political commentators.
(“I got wrong a lot,” says Molly. Rick also has three major predictions he got wrong during the election cycle.)
But one thing they’re sure of is that the chances of Pence pardoning the president are extremely unlikely.
The two think Trump pardoning himself is more likely, but there’s a big caveat to that. “The essential thing of a pardon is it involves the admission of a crime. And so he has to admit that he violated the law,” says Rick.
That said, there’s a laundry list of other people he could pardon and the duo took some guesses on who it could be.
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Rick and Molly also discuss why Biden’s ‘“boring” Cabinet picks (unlike Trump’s) will piss off Mitch McConnell: “He's picking people who are not these enormously, you know, controversial or dramatic figures. And that's OK,” says Rick. They’re not going to be people “who are going to end up running into the Mitch McConnell meat grinder.” But that just might work in his favor.
Plus! The hosts talk about their favorite crimes of the Trump administration and, speaking of crime, “I think we're going to hear about Jared for a long time.” And will there be a President Dan Bongino in 2024??
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
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