Trump's lies won't work

Benjamin Wittes:

....the president might accomplish a short-term goal. He has rewarded his friends. And he has thus shown others that he will protect them if they commit crimes or take risks for him.

He has put the power of the United States federal government behind the patent lie that the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters was an injustice requiring remedy, which is all part of the larger lie that the prosecution of Trump himself was political. 

And that in turn is all part of the still-larger lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. So sure, he has thrown some dust in the air.

But if the long-term goal is to erase the ugly history of what happened in 2020 and 2021, to change Trump from the perpetrator into the victim of the crime, it won’t work. 

Pardoning those convicted, after all, doesn’t erase the records of what they pled to. It doesn’t erase the evidence presented to juries about what they did. It doesn’t erase their own copious social media boasting about it all. 

Just as Trump can’t change the truth about his own conduct by getting elected and getting the cases against himself dropped and projecting his own goals for weaponization of the Justice Department onto the prior administration, he cannot change either the truth about what his followers did, though he can wipe out the consequences for them....

Trump pardons Ross Ulbricht, creator of dark web marketplace Silk Road