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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Trump announced in a post last night that he was considering voiding the last minute preemptive Biden pardons of Fauci, members of January 6 House committee, and others, because an "autopen" was used to sign the pardons. Presidential authority to grant pardons is very broad, and apparently autopen has been used by prior presidents; looks like a losing case if it goes before the Supreme Court.

It's not because of the autopen, it's because of the accusation that Biden was too incapacitated to even know it was happening. That the broad authority to grant pardons was not, in fact, being exercised by the president at all. And I for one would love to see Biden deposed about, well, anything having to do with these pardons and see what he remembers.

If he goes through with it it's great politics.

Regardless of the outcome it puts the news cycle on track to have to defend Biden's antics in the future or at least remind everyone that they happened, and even if Biden survives until it becomes an issue it won't be in a state amenable to his own defense.

The risk is that beating on a defeated old man alienates people who would want to talk about something else than old men grudges, but given Trump's also been pretty energetic about doing stuff this time around, it comes off more as a victory lap.

Long term, I'm not sure it's a good move to start questioning the legitimacy of presidential acts after the fact though. Especially pardons.

I don't know who this mythical normie is that would be offput by doing a victory lap on Biden's demented half corpse. You are basically plugged into the MSM narrative and have forgotten all the gaslighting about Biden being "sharp as a tack" and the hilarious lies about him running circles around people at the White House, or you have a memory longer than a goldfish are are furious. There is not a lot of in between.

Well, I guess there are the liars who covered up his dementia for 3.5 years and are now writing books about the coverup, like they weren't a part of it.

A lot of people would rather the government focus on policy than on scandals. They don't care about Biden's dementia or the J6 Committee's conduct; they care about what Trump can do for them in the here and now.