This week, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — who is serving a 14-year sentence in federal prison on corruption charges — has been mercilessly ridiculed on social media for an op-ed slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats for impeaching President Donald Trump. In his op-ed (which was published by the right-wing website Newsmax), Blagojevich even went so far as to compare Trump to President Abraham Lincoln and argued that Pelosi would have impeached Lincoln had she been around in the 19th Century. Journalist Dana Milbank, in his Washington Post column, humorously weighs in on Blagojevich’s op-ed and asserts that in Blagojevich, Trump might have found someone who is equally clueless about U.S. history.
Although Blagojevich is a Democrat, he has been a strident defender of Trump — first with the Russia investigation and the Mueller Report, now with the Ukraine scandal and Trump’s impeachment. And Milbank notes that Blagojevich has an ulterior motive for being so pro-Trump.
“Blagojevich has been angling for Trump to commute his sentence, a possibility Trump has floated,” Milbank explains. “Blagojevich’s wife has made appeals on Fox News, and Blagojevich recently appeared shirtless, Putin-style, in the prison yard. But this may not be exactly the endorsement Trump wants: the most extravagantly corrupt politician of recent years defending the man who is giving him a run for that title?”
Milbank interviewed historian David Greenberg (who teaches at Rutgers University) for his column, and Greenberg described Blagojevich’s description of historic events in his Newsmax op-ed as “sophomoric” and “nonsensical.”
“Blagojevich concludes that Democrats would have impeached Lincoln for emancipating the slaves, noting that ‘the Democrats of that day opposed it,’” Milbank observes. “Thus does Blago’s time machine skip 150 years of history in which the parties switched places on race.
Blagojevich, Milbank notes, “speculates that Lincoln would face impeachment for shenanigans at political conventions, ignoring the crucial distinction: he didn’t use his official powers for personal gain, as Blagojevich and Trump both did.”
Milbank concludes his column by joking that maybe Trump should give Blagojevich a commutation.
“Come to think of it, Trump should commute Blago’s sentence, and soon,” Milbank jokes. “With four more years in prison, there’s no telling how much more damage the former governor could do to U.S. history.”