A Look at Trump’s Record on Crime
Velshi
MS NOW, Ali Velshi
4.7 • 793 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning. It's Saturday, October 25th. I'm Charles Coleman Jr. filling in for Ali Velshi, and we've got a lot to talk about. |
| 0:15.1 | Now, Donald Trump has long proclaimed his attention to restore law and order in America. It's a standard Republican talking point. |
| 0:22.5 | And for generations, the GOP has pitched itself as the tough on crime party. |
| 0:27.0 | And that pitch has always brought problematic policies that have typically targeted poor |
| 0:32.4 | and minority communities for over-policing while doing very little to address the actual |
| 0:37.1 | root causes of crime. |
| 0:39.2 | But when Donald Trump talks about restoring law and order, it's more than the typical |
| 0:43.4 | Republican euphemism for targeting communities of color. It's actually full-blown irony. |
| 0:49.1 | As MSNBC, Steve Benin noted this week, quote, in his first term, Trump effectively wielded his pardon |
| 0:55.3 | commutation power as a corrupt weapon, rewarding loyalists, completing cover-ups, and undermining |
| 1:01.1 | federal law enforcement, and doling out favors to the politically connected, resulting in some of |
| 1:06.6 | the most controversial pardons in American history. And in fact, at the end of his first term, |
| 1:11.5 | the Washington Post noted that, according to GovTRAX legislative misconduct database, Trump was then |
| 1:17.1 | responsible for pardoning a majority of the Republican congressman convicted of felonies in the 21st |
| 1:23.5 | century. This disgraced former Congressman George Santos now makes the 10th Congressional Republican |
| 1:30.0 | convicted of a crime to benefit from Trump's benevolence. Santos was convicted of wire fraud |
| 1:36.0 | and aggravated identity theft just earlier this year. He made it well known that he was seeking help |
| 1:41.4 | from the president. But many thought that Santos's crimes, |
| 1:44.9 | they were just too brazen for Donald Trump to grant him any client kind of clemency. |
| 1:49.8 | Well, if you thought that, think again. And earlier this week, Trump pardoned Changpang Zao, |
| 1:56.4 | the founder of cryptocurrency company Binance. Zao previously pleaded guilty for enabling money laundering. |
| 2:04.6 | And earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had been quietly |
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