DeSantis and Haley Give the Right Answer on the Question of a Trump Pardon

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley drew some ridicule from NBC News over an answer she gave to a question at a Plymouth, New Hampshire campaign event on Friday night.

On the heels of a very bad week for Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate said she would pardon Donald Trump if he's convicted of federal crimes. "I would pardon Trump if he is found guilty," she said at a campaign event in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on Thursday.
“A leader needs to think about what’s in the best interest of the country," Haley went on. "What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country. What's in the best interest of our country is to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him."
Haley was responding to a question from a 9-year-old in the audience, who joked that she was “the new John Kerry” because she was “a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue.”
“How can you change your opinion like that in just eight years, and will you pardon Donald Trump?” the child asked.

On the same day, half a continent away in Iowa, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis fielded the same question.

REPORTER: Nikki Haley said she will pardon Trump if he ends up being convicted and she is elected. Would you [garbled] the same?
DESANTIS: Well, I've already said that long ago. I think we got to move on as a country and, you know, like Ford did to Nixon, because the divisions are just not in the country’s interest.
REPORTER: Governor, you...
DESANTIS: Yeah, I said that months ago.

Both Haley and DeSantis are right. The next president, even if it is Donald Trump, must make the first order of business pardoning Trump of all possible federal crimes. This, I might add, is something Trump should've done for all the men and women facing prison and bankruptcy for showing up at the Capitol on January 6 to support him but were thrown under the bus instead.

The thing that separates stable democracies like the US, the UK, and a tiny handful of other, mostly Anglophone, countries from the rest of the world is the orderly transfer of power. That phenomenon only exists when the loser of an election decides to abide by the results. If losers know they and their families will be persecuted, impoverished, imprisoned, or executed, then we are Peru or Pakistan; we are not the United States of America.

Our republican form of government is gravely wounded. An overweening Supreme Court in the thrall of relativism and Anthony Kennedy overthrew an established moral order that had served Western Civilization well for several thousand years. A sitting president, that would be Barack Obama, and a CIA director, that would be John Brennan, knew that a candidate for the presidency (Hillary Clinton) was concocting a bull***t narrative about ties between her rival (Trump) and Russia and not only let it proceed but allowed the FBI and CIA to amplify the story. Trump was impeached twice without any cause and subjected to a kangaroo court headed by the most extensive collection of midwits, lackwits, and f***wits that Congress could assemble.

Now, an effort is underway to twist the Fourteenth Amendment's provisions, wrap it up with what amounts to a bill of attainder, and keep Trump from running for president. If that last part sounds familiar, it's because it just happened in another country. Vladimir Putin had his only rival for March's presidential election, Yekaterina Duntsova, tossed off the ballot, too. I don't know whether their commies are taking their lead from our commies or ours from theirs.

BREAKING: Colorado Supreme Court Votes to Boot Trump Off the Ballot Using the 14th Amendment

After becoming president after Nixon's resignation in 1974, Gerald Ford faced this same dilemma. Even though he was probably aware that it spelled the end of his political career, he pardoned Nixon when the easiest thing would have been to let him experience the full effects of the "modified limited hangout" that caused his resignation. Ford saw that the last thing the nation needed was a prolonged legal battle that divided the country and resulted in a former president in jail.

I'm not sure how our civil society survives a prosecution of Trump.

It is encouraging, though, to see that there are candidates who understand the stakes and are willing to stand up and say that the nation and our republic are not served by imprisoning a former president for the sake of spite.