Joe: Trump Numbing Everyone To Future Pardons | Morning Joe | MSNBC

I'm talking about Jason and the miscarriage of justice, let's talk about a president who has pardoned war criminals who shot little girls, pardoned war criminals who killed defenseless prisoners and yesterday, of course, pardoned Wall Street convicts, pardoned to politicians who acted in the most sordid way. I mean, this is a means, as my old grievance teacher used to say. University of Florida. You can see this one coming like a freight train out of the fog. This is Donald Trump, lulling

everyone

to

future

pardons

from his co-conspirators. Roger Stone. and Paul Manafort and maybe even Michael Flynn oh yeah, Joe and and this is what this guy has always been, it's not new, you can go back to Joe Arpaio Joe Arpaio, who was basically racially profiling any person of color in Arizona and the President Trump came and said, okay, you're perfectly fine with this and I don't think you can stress enough about basically pardoning a war criminal.

Look, what did Gallagher know? Did you stab the prisoners with a knife? His own SEAL team six said this man is crazy, they said. He will kill anything his fellow soldiers give him and obviously Donald Trump is smarter than the generals and soldiers because he forgave him anyway, so what we're seeing here is what proto-dictators do. What we are seeing here is what autocrats do. where they basically tell the entire public and fellow politicians number one that the law has always been my will it's not about what you did it's not about the laws you break it's not about the people you harm it's about whether I think or not You are important whether or not you are loyal to me and if I like you then I don't care what the law says, so this is the dangerous part and it is not only breaking the rule, but it makes it difficult for our Justice Department. do his job look, I don't think William Barr is a particularly ethical guy, but when he says look, I can't get people to spend 300 hours building cases if they know you're always going to forgive someone if that's the case.

Turns out it's your friend who gave money to your campaign. This is what we were talking about last fall. We were saying that there are other impeachable crimes that this president participates in and he is doing more of the same, but he has been doing it since he took office. and you know, Caddy K, this is a couple of, you know, I guess a week ago there were some Trumpian websites and they put up my quote saying that Trump would arrest any journalist if he could get away with criticizing him and I couldn't. I don't know if they were trying to criticize him for saying it or not, but it's so obvious.

I mean, there's an authoritarian streak in him and don't take my word for it, take him for what he says basically. what louis What authoritarian leaders say is what Donald Trump is saying when he says that Article Two gives me the power to do whatever I want. This is what Steven Miller is saying when he says that the president's authority cannot be questioned. This president has authoritarian instincts like no other United States. United president before him and it's more than a little scary, isn't it? Yes, look at the people around the world who you seem to admire, see in Egypt, Iran, in Turkey, Putin, in Russia, her and in China, these are all people who have authoritarianism, but sometimes you seem to express envy of them because they have powers unfettered by a free press and unfettered by independent courts which he does not seem to have and this is not just after the impeachment trial, it has been a trait of Donald Trump from the beginning.

Right at the beginning of his presidency he talked about how he wanted to be more involved in the FBI, how he wanted to be more involved in the Department of Justice, but he held back as if it were a session where he was raising the issue that we What I've Learned recently is that democracy is partly made up of laws, but also partly made up of norms and traditions, and that a president who does not get involved in court cases is a tradition, it is not a law, it is not written that he cannot do that and I think that is the weakness as a system that is being demonstrated: it works if you have a president who accepts the norms and traditions but if you have one who does not do them, something that the population tends not to do because they think they are right and

everyone

else is wrong and everyone else is against them, then their traditions look a little more fragile, well, in any case, if the Trump supporters on the Trump right make that argument, they should go back and, If they could say well, he says the Department of Justice can do it.

Whatever you want with your righteous Justice Department, that's not what many of them were saying back in 1993, when the Clinton administration met with a Justice Department official to draft a press release about Travelgate, the crisis and the panic. among the Republicans in the It was extraordinary and look what this guy is doing, completely tearing down any wall of independence between the Department of Justice and the White House and now, suddenly, they are silent, now, suddenly, okay, now, suddenly, because it's Donald Trump, this failed reality show. or-- who spent the last 20 years giving political contributions to Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner and Charlie Rangel and Hillary Clinton eight times suddenly this model of conservatism whose debt increase was greater than anyone in American history suddenly did it mikka okay, we appreciate you visiting MSNBC on YouTube and be sure to subscribe to stay up to date on the biggest stories of the day and you can click on any of the videos around us to see more than four Morning Joe and MSNBC, thank you. a lot to look at