Crime

Trump Cannot Buy Me With His Jack Johnson Pardon

He's not pardoning him because it's the right thing to do, he's creating a self-serving narrative.

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(Photo by Louis Van Oeyen/Western Reserve Historical Society/Getty Images).

Former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson received a posthumous pardon from President Donald Trump. Johnson was convicted by an all-white jury in 1913 for “transporting” white women across state lines for “immoral purposes,” which was a violation of the Mann Act.

Civil Rights activists, and even Senators John McCain and Harry Reid have pushed for Johnson’s pardon for years. It is a nice gesture, a symbol that these kinds of racist laws were never okay and never will be again.

And I refuse to give Donald Trump one whit of credit for it. In related news, I wouldn’t take a drink of water from a racist if the racist was the first person I met after seven days in the Sahara freaking Desert.

I’m not effing STUPID. I see what he did here. Trump doesn’t care one bit about stopping racism. He’s literally out here calling immigrants “animals.” Trump pardoned Johnson for two cynical reasons.

  • He wants to pardon people, because he knows he will have to pardon his CO-CONSPIRATORS before too long. WHEN he pardons people indicted by Robert Mueller, he wants to have some kind of record of pardoning people who aren’t a threat to flip on him.
  • When people call him a racist, because he’s a racist, he wants to say “but I pardoned a black guy.” He wants white people on Fox & Friends to say that he pardoned a black guy. This is just Trump saying: “I PARDON BLACK FRIENDS.” Can’t wait for Kanye West to tweet out his support.

Whether you give people credit who end up doing something good, even though they did it for entirely cynical and selfish reasons, is up to your own conscience.

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Me? If the milk’s sour, I ain’t the type of pussy to drink it.

Trump pardons late boxer Jack Johnson [CNBC]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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