Apparently, the propaganda press has rediscovered its outrage over presidential pardons — now that President Donald Trump is issuing them. After watching then-President Joe Biden hand out pardons, clemency, and commutations like they were candy, the left-wing media have finally found their missing pearls to clutch.
Trump pardoned reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had a combined sentence of 19 years for what pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson called a “first-time nonviolent offense.” The duo was found “guilty of eight counts of financial fraud and two counts of tax evasion in 2022,” Fox News reported. Trump also issued a pardon to former New York Congressman Michael Grimm, who served seven months in prison after he pled guilty “to underreporting taxable revenue from his Manhattan restaurant Healthalicious,” according to the New York Post. Trump also pardoned rapper “NBA YoungBoy” and former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland.
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl said in a post on X: “Donald Trump is using his pardon power early and often — And there’s a clear trend: many of his pardons are going to his supporters and political allies.”
CNN’s Aaron Blake wrote: “‘No MAGA left behind’: Trump’s pardons get even more political.”
Blake continued: “If you look closely at how Trump’s used his pardon power — which he has exercised dramatically this week, with a slew of new pardons and commutations on Wednesday alone — it’s virtually impossible to miss the political overtones. Many of Trump’s acts of clemency have rewarded an ally or someone tied to an ally, or they have served a clear and not terribly subtle political purpose.”
MSNBC’s Frank Figliuzzi wrote that “Trump’s pardons show he is becoming more brazenly corrupt.” Figliuzzi appealed to the precedent of giving pardons “as a president [is] leaving office,” citing a “legal expert” who said that pardons can be “costly.”
“Not anymore,” Figliuzzi wrote, apparently angered that Trump issued a pardon while president instead of doing it “quietly” on his way out the door.
Politico’s Gregory Svirnovskiy claimed that Trump was on a “clemency spree.”
But a cursory Google search seemingly reveals that for all the hand-wringing about Trump exercising his executive authority to grant pardons and clemency, media figures like Svirnovskiy and Figliuzzi were nowhere to be found when Biden was issuing his preemptive pardons — or pardons he issued to his family members before leaving office. (Notably, Biden didn’t just issue political and family allies, either. He also quietly commuted the sentences of Chinese spies and a Chinese national convicted of child pornography.) Blake gently questioned the scope of the Hunter Biden pardon, but he made sure to include critiques of Trump’s first term grants of clemency.
As for Karl, he responded to Biden’s sweeping and unprecedented pardons with a post on X that said: “As one of his final acts as President, Joe Biden just issued pardons for Milley, Fauci and the J6 committee.” For good measure, Karl tossed in a quote from Biden and later defended Biden’s pardon power as absolute, even if executed via autopen.
No fiery editorial, no hysteria, no politicization — just a soft landing for a president pardoning the architects of the pandemic policies, the sham Jan. 6 committee, and family members who engaged in shady foreign business.
It turns out, the media doesn’t oppose presidential pardons; they just oppose them when they don’t agree with them.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
