Pence Pardon Prediction

By Zamboni

Remember when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon back in 1974? Boy, were we cats mad! Nixon had obstructed justice, violated the Constitution, abused his power, and, by resigning, escaped impeachment — and now, he wouldn't ever truly pay for his crimes. Contrary to what a lot of pundits were saying at the time, the Nixon pardon was proof that the American system just didn't work.

Ford paid for it two years later, though. It was one of several reasons he lost the election in 1976 — others being that Ronald Reagan mortally wounded him at the Republican Convention and that, in a general-election debate with Jimmy Carter, Ford insisted that Poland was not under Soviet domination. Jeez, talk about gaffes.

Remembering this as vividly as we do makes us wonder about the rumors that daily fly on Twitter. If Benedict Donald loses to Joe Biden this November, tweeps aver, he will resign before Inauguration Day, and Mike Pence will pardon him. People are sure about this because Pence is such a flunky and toady, a fact of which we were reminded just yesterday by the upcoming Bob Woodward book.

Would Pence actually do it? He wants to run for President in 2024, and if he only (GACK!) was POTUS for a few weeks during the transition, constitutionally he could serve two full terms if elected. With the GOP completely taken over by the Trumpsters, including at the state party level, he couldn't afford not to let Donald off. (Plus, as noted above, he's a flunky and a toady.) To refuse to issue a pardon would be political suicide in the sick cult that passes for today's Republican Party.

A word of caution, though: The Trump voter represents an ever-shrinking slice of the electorate, thanks to, among other factors, the disastrous handling of the COVID pandemic, the "losers and suckers" scandal, and the plain fact that Trump's alienated thousands of non-base voters nearly every day of his Presidency. A GOP-nominated Mike Pence would need to woo voters far beyond MAGA in the fall of '24. In our view, Bob Woodward just ensured that that will never happen.

In short, with 200,000 Americans dead and Trump's "downplaying it" bragging to Woodward, the window for the Trump-resigns-Pence-pardons scenario has probably closed. Once again, it all comes down to tapes, doesn't it? We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.