President Donald Trump's pardons already stand out as the most self-serving of any other president, and suggest that he'd try to pardon himself if the need ever arose.
Other presidents have issued controversial pardons, but his pardons of war criminals, corrupt officials and white-collar criminals are "on another level" -- and, like so many of Trump's actions, offer some insight into his own psyche, reported the Washington Post's Aaron Blake.
"Trump’s first pardon was for Joe Arpaio, who might be the most pronounced embodiment of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies in American politics," Blake wrote. "Arpaio’s crimes also involved disobeying a judge’s orders against racial profiling of suspected undocumented immigrants; Trump as a candidate in the months before the pardon advocated racial profiling and for a ban on Muslim immigration and, in one of his first acts as president, banned immigration from several majority-Muslim nations."
The president has also pardoned conservative gadfly Dinesh D’Souza, who, like Trump, was a "birther" conspiracy theorist and, also like Trump, convicted of a campaign finance violation -- which former attorney Michael Cohen implicated Trump in after his own conviction.
His pardon and commutation spree on Tuesday -- which included notorious "junk bond king" Michael Milken, former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. and disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- really gave up the game, according to Blake.
"The Blagojevich commutation and the dual billionaire pardons Tuesday drive home the idea that Trump may sometimes see himself in these pardons," Blake wrote. "That’s too much coincidence for one day. Trump has maintained before that he has the 'absolute right' to pardon himself if need be. He kind of already has."
