USA: Will Trump pardon himself?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2020
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
During four years in office, President Donald Trump has already handed out a number of controversial pardons to friends and allies, but are there more to come? And what is the intended use of the pardon power?
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Guests:
Michael Gerhardt, professor of Constitutional law at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Josh Glancy, Washington Bureau Chief, The Sunday Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | President Donald Trump has spent his career and particularly his time in the White House |
| 0:06.9 | flouting norms. |
| 0:08.9 | President Trump has been in office for nearly two and a half years and his administration has seen |
| 0:13.0 | unprecedented turnover inside his cabinet. This is definitely |
| 0:16.8 | unprecedented. It is worth looking at what the president just did here because as we |
| 0:20.9 | said it's unprecedented. Unprecedent and unprecedented in both its breath and its brazenness. |
| 0:27.0 | Having lost the election will Donald Trump make his last few weeks in office just as unprecedented, particularly when it comes to the power |
| 0:37.0 | of the presidential pardon. |
| 0:39.3 | No president in American history has ever pardoned himself, And if he does it, it's the kind of thing nobody |
| 0:46.4 | would be surprised by. You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the |
| 0:51.3 | Sunday Times. I'm Manveen Rana. Today, will Donald Trump pardon |
| 0:57.0 | himself? Josh Glancy here, Washington Bureau Chief for the Sunday Times. |
| 1:11.5 | To find out how the last few weeks of the Trump administration are playing out, we turned |
| 1:16.7 | to the Sunday Times Washington Bureau Chief. |
| 1:19.0 | Yeah, this is pardon season. |
| 1:20.8 | It starts with Thanksgiving when they pardon the turkey and then we'll run until |
| 1:25.8 | January the 20th and Joe run becomes president and we're used to this debate at this point in |
| 1:32.0 | presidency because the president no longer has to face |
| 1:36.2 | the voters again. |
| 1:37.2 | So the president is free to do that as he pleases until he's out of office. I think at this point people are expecting |
| 1:44.3 | Trump to flout whatever remaining norms. He hasn't flouted because there's really nothing |
| 1:50.4 | to stop him. He wasn't someone who was particularly accountable to |
... |
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