The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s final holiday pardon wave kept setting off alarms on Dec. 30, and the backlash was not limited to the usual critics who object to nearly everything he does. The broader complaint in Washington was that he had taken one of the presidency’s most solemn powers and used it like a reward system for people in his orbit. That criticism hardened because the list of beneficiaries was not random or politically neutral. Several of the people receiving clemency had obvious connections to Trump’s political world, his business circles, or the wider network of loyalists who had stayed close to him through scandal, investigations, and years of norm-breaking politics. Even for observers willing to accept the Constitution gives presidents wide authority to pardon, the pattern looked less like a careful exercise of mercy than a final gesture of favoritism. In that sense, the problem was not merely that Trump used the power, but that he used it in a way that seemed to advertise access, proximity, and loyalty as the real currency.

The most combustible piece of the package was the inclusion of the Blackwater contractors convicted in the killing of Iraqi civilians. Those cases had long stood for impunity in the eyes of critics of the Iraq war era and for people who believe powerful figures in the national security world too often escape consequences that ordinary defendants would not. Trump’s decision to step into that territory revived an old grievance rather than quieting it. For many critics, this was not a complicated legal debate about mercy, rehabilitation, or second chances. It was a message about whose wrongdoing could be forgiven once the right political connections were in place, and whose suffering could be brushed aside by executive power. The details of each case mattered, but the symbolism of the choice mattered more. By pardoning figures so closely associated with a notorious episode of violence and controversy, Trump invited the conclusion that his final acts in office were not driven by a neutral sense of justice. Instead, they looked like a deliberate signal to allies and sympathizers that loyalty to the president could still pay off, even at the very end of his term.

That is why the backlash quickly expanded beyond the specific names on the pardon list and into a larger indictment of the way Trump had governed. Critics argued that the episode fit a pattern they had seen for years: loyalty to Trump seemed to produce benefits, while accountability was more likely to fall on outsiders, enemies, or people who had fallen out of favor. To them, the holiday pardons did not stand alone. They echoed the same logic that had shaped his personnel choices, his public feuds, his political endorsements, and his tendency to treat institutions as tools to be used rather than rules to be respected. Supporters could, and did, frame the moves as acts of mercy or as legitimate corrections to harsh sentencing and old judgments. That defense is not without constitutional footing. The pardon power is broad, and presidents have historically used it to soften punishments, settle old scores, and make political statements of their own. But the legal authority to do something does not erase the ethical question of how and why it is done. In this case, the public reading was unusually blunt. The clemency wave looked to many observers like another self-serving transaction from a president who had never hidden his preference for insiders, especially when those insiders could be counted on to show gratitude.

The institutional discomfort was sharpened by the timing. Trump was in the final stretch of a presidency that had already put immense strain on norms, and the pardons landed as part of a last burst of power at a moment when many institutions were trying to look ahead to a transition. That made the moves feel less like isolated acts of clemency and more like one more example of Trump testing how far he could push the office on his way out. The fact that the pardon power is constitutional did not make the reaction any less severe. If anything, it made the criticism more pointed, because opponents were not arguing that Trump had exceeded some technical boundary. They were arguing that he had revealed the moral emptiness with which he approached a solemn presidential duty. The concern was not only about the individuals who benefited, but about the precedent and the message. If the president’s friends could be forgiven so readily, then association with him could function as a kind of political insurance policy. That idea angered people inside and outside government because it suggested that the justice system and the presidency were being blended into a protection racket for the connected. In the end, that may have been the deepest source of the disgust: the clemency itself touched a relatively small number of people, but it broadcast a much larger lesson about who could still expect protection when Trump was the one holding the pen.