Special counsel Jack Smith moved on Monday to end the federal prosecution against President-elect Donald Trump. The filings confirm that Trump will not face accountability for his alleged federal crimes. But that’s not enough for some observers. Hours before Smith moved to dismiss the cases against Trump, The Washington Post’s opinion section published a call for President Joe Biden to “make good on his inaugural promise” to bring America together by pardoning the incoming president entirely.
In the essay, the American Enterprise Institute’s Marc Theissen and Danielle Pletka nodded to Smith’s cases ending but still argued that “while Trump might not need Biden’s pardon, America does.” I disagree. Such an act from Biden would only further sunder the national fabric. Their idea of national unity is a noble one, painting a vision of Americans coming together to undo the divisiveness of years past. But that image falls apart when applied to Biden potentially pardoning Trump.
The trouble is there is no such thing as a unilateral reconciliation; it is a dialogue by its very nature.
I’ve written at length before about why a pardon for Trump is not the right move in general. The short version is that there is little historical evidence that it would go over well with Americans. When President Gerald Ford decided to pardon Richard Nixon, deeming his predecessor’s resignation punishment enough for Watergate, it was a wildly unpopular move that Ford never recovered from politically.
Likewise, Theissen and Pletka have made their case at length. When Trump was first indicted federally last year, they claimed that a pardon from Biden would help restore the norms that “were torn apart by both Trump and his opponents.” (Presidents have no pardon power over state criminal cases, like the one Trump faced in Manhattan where he was convicted earlier this year.) This week, they argue, Biden would “be remembered by history for a final act of statesmanship that brought a divided America together.”
In this construction, the unity and healing that the country needs are due to the actions of both sides of the aisle — but the only solution is forgiveness from one side. The trouble is there is no such thing as a unilateral reconciliation; it is a dialogue by its very nature. It’s true that Biden offering a pardon for Trump could be framed as outreach to the president-elect’s followers. But what, then, could be expected from this show of good faith? Are there reciprocal steps that would bring the MAGA movement away from the edge and toward a more united country?
The answer is “of course there are” and many of them are well within Trump’s power to provide. Theissen and Pletka argue that without a pardon from Biden, “we could find ourselves at the start of a vicious cycle, in which Republicans now argue they are justified in weaponizing the justice system to go after Democrats, and Democrats then feel free to retaliate when they regain power — sending the country spiraling into a miasma of partisan litigation.” The idea seems to be that magnanimous behavior from Biden would prompt a similar disarmament from the GOP.
It’s a sentiment that willfully ignores that this horse has long ago left the stable. For years, Trump has called for retribution against the investigations into his conduct. His failed effort to install former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., as attorney general speaks to those goals as loudly as Trump’s own numerous speeches on the matter. Moreover, his entire MAGA movement is built on division and exploiting the idea of the “other” as the root cause of Americans’ problems. Even if Trump is allowed “to start his presidency with a legal tabula rasa,” as Theissen and Pletka advocated, his penchant for labeling Democrats as “enemies from within” will not dim, nor are his followers likely to moderate their own views.
Any act of supposed mercy from Trump would likewise be more divisive than healing. Offering Biden a pardon in kind would be an insult, as months of Republican investigations showed no evidence of wrongdoing to match the wild claims thrown his way. Trump could offer to, say, commute Hunter Biden’s prison sentence, but it seems deeply unlike the man who we’ve seen use the awesome power of the pardon mostly in the interest of benefiting himself and his allies.
It’s here that it becomes clear that “unity” in this sense is synonymous with an equally mendacious definition of “civility.”
Americans do remain united on a few things, including that the country is moving in the wrong direction no matter who’s in charge. And there are policies that receive a supermajority of support from Americans like raising billionaires’ taxes — but that’s not what’s being discussed here. Instead, we’re meant to believe that pardoning Trump is the thing that will bring together a divided people, a remarkable claim given that the split is so sharp across partisan lines.
It’s here that it becomes clear that “unity” in this sense is synonymous with an equally mendacious definition of “civility.” It speaks to a worldview where silence is golden, and past problems are swept under the rug in the interest of an illusory peace. It is a version of “unity” that requires accepting that some people’s actions are harmful to society and then empowering the people who want to do more harm. It is “unity” in name only that undercuts the legitimacy of the disagreements that Americans will in no way abandon with clemency for Trump.
The American system is designed for opposition. The only “unity” that should be placed as a guiding star is the common purpose to work toward fully franchising all Americans to take part in our processes. In pardoning Trump, Biden would be co-signing the belief that it is more important that one man be given special treatment than all men should be united in their equality under the law.