'If you kiss my butt, I will do something for you': MSNBC commentator slams Trump's 'pay-to-play' pardons

On MSNBC Wednesday, analyst Jason Johnson broke down the self-serving logic of President Donald Trump's pardons.

"These people wrote him from prison, these people had friends asking him questions. Many of these people were connected to the president financially," said Johnson. "And it's the general message that he has, which is that this is a pay-to-play administration. If you kiss my butt, if you give me money, if you make me feel good about myself, if you praise me, if you come up for ridiculous names for yourself 15 minutes after you come out of prison, the I will do something for you."

"The scary part about this — again, it is not just the destruction of how our justice system is supposed to operate," continued Johnson. "It is that everybody else out there who's committing a crime right now knows, well all I gotta do, drop a couple coins in the bucket, and Donald Trump will take care of me. Everybody out there right now who's actually working on investigations to take down corrupt politicians is thinking, why am I going to do this work? This is like a bad '80s cop film, where every time you catch the bad guy, he's got diplomatic immunity, he gets to run away. That is what we're facing right now."

"And William Barr was always in on this stuff," added Johnson. "This humble-brag nonsense that we always hear from this administration, I can't believe that Donald Trump is keeping me from doing my job — they always end up working with the president at the end of the day. So no one should have believed that he was ever upset with what he was already in line with doing."

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