They begged, borrowed, and simped for nothing: The MAGA left comes out empty-handed in the final slew of Trump pardons

Posted by
Glenn Greenwald

Donald Trump, in what may be his last great disgraceful act in office, issued a slew of pardons and commutations that included corrupt politicians and the wealthy, connected elite. The most prominent among what was once known as clemency was a full pardon of white nationalist talk show host and old Trump ally Steve Bannon. Trump is looking to write the next political chapter of his story, and with Congressional allies, cabinet members, and staff abandoning him in the aftermath of the Trump-incited insurrection of January 6, Trump likely believes Bannon can help plot his resurrection, or at least, the destruction of Republicans insufficiently sycophantic about Trump.

But the white supremacist right was not the only camp hoping for high-profile pardons in the final hours before Trump leaves office. Self-professed left-libertarians had lobbied Trump for a pardon of people like Kremlin-based American fugitive Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, the founder of the Russian intelligence front Wikileaks. They had good reason to believe they would have the ear of the second-ever president of the Confederate States of America.

Wikileaks got Trump elected in 2016, after all, by slowly and salaciously milking hacked (but without legal or public benefit value) emails from Hillary Clinton and her associates. Snowden and other allies of Assange, like Glenn Greenwald, turned into Trump apologists of the kind that could put Josh Hawley to shame. They even showed off their outrage at civil society's pushback against violent, incendiary, hate speech for Trump's benefit. Greenwald has practically become a co-host of Fox's primetime show hosted by Tucker Carlson, perhaps the media landscape's most prolific Trump sycophant.

Heck, they even tried to appeal to Trump's sense of outrage towards Republicans who voted to impeach him last week.

But it all appears to have been for not. While hours still remain in Trump's term, neither Assange nor Snowden appeared on what was likely Trump's last list of clemency action. There is no such thing as two-way loyalty with Trump, and the MAGA-left's prima facie failure to adequately smear Joe Biden and therefore re-elect Trump (evidenced by the fact that Trump lost and that President-elect Joe Biden is about to become president), Trump clearly did not think they supplicated enough.

And so just like Erik Prince, right-wing mercenary and the brother of Trump's Education Secretary Betsy Devos who resigned in the wake of the 1/6 insurrection, Snowden and Assange too got snubbed, it would seem.

Betting on the most craven, racist, evil person in modern politics and losing. Heartbreaking, isn't it?



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