Bulwark Takes - King Trump Makes Insane Decree On Biden Pardons

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger break down Trump’s latest Truth Social post, claiming Biden’s January 6th pardons are invalid due to an auto pen signature. Conspiracy theories, legal chaos, political fallout and more.

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mcflurry your dip is your business mcchrispy strips at mcdonald's hey guys it's tim miller from the bullock here with my buddy andrew egger who writes our morning shots newsletter subscribe to this youtube feed and go to the bullock.com to get his newsletter. He wrote this morning about the breaking news that Donald Trump has decreed, King Trump has decreed that Joe Biden's preemptive pardons for the January 6th committee members are all caps, void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because they were apparently signed with an auto pen. I guess the theory of the case here is that Joe Biden was asleep and that some other person signed the auto pen. I think that there's some problems with that theory. But Andrew, what can you tell us about what we know right now? Yeah, so you can go really macro or really micro on this. The bottom line that you

just said is that Donald Trump is saying Joe Biden tried to pardon a lot of my political enemies, which I didn't like very much because I really wanted to try them with crimes. I think they all committed treason and things like that for investigating my attempt to steal the 2020 election and then particularly for January 6th. So what what Biden is or what Trump is now saying is this post is he posted it on Truth Social in the wee hours this morning, about 1235. And it really is kind of an amazing post because it's like six conspiracy theories all rolled up into one. He's he's saying one, Biden appears not to have signed these things physically himself. That is possibly true, by the way. We can talk a little bit more about that if you want. But but presidents do sometimes use what's called an auto pen to sign various things

that come across their desk. Did you know this about me, Andrew, that I was the auto pen signer for the governor of Colorado in the year 2001 when you were still in diapers? Is that true? Oh, yeah. Back then we had a thing where it was like a machine. It's gotten a lot fancier. And this is massive machine. You put your foot on the pedal like it's like a grand piano and then the little pen would come out and go and yeah i was i mean i don't i wasn't the auto pen signer for like official pardons but you know for low level memorabilia and yeah exactly anyway yeah right right and and that's that's constantly done by by you know the president's office pumps out tons of that stuff for like people who like collect presidential signatures and things like that

whatever um but but it is also occasionally done for like high level official business i mean presidents president obiden and president president obama and president thought that was an intentional joke at first it's early both those guys our last two democratic presidents have both signed not just you know orders and and pardons and things like that but but laws with with an auto signature and in fact under, under George W. Bush, he sought from the Justice Department some guidance about whether that was legal. And the Justice Department in 2005 said, yes, the president can designate an aid to sign things for him. And that essentially has the same effect as law. So thus far with the auto pen, that's kind of the small thing here. That's the that's the justification, right? The big thing is that Donald Trump one falsely

accuses the January 6th Committee of having committed crimes to falsely accuses Joe Biden as and the people around Joe Biden of pushing these things out without his knowledge without him even knowing that it was happening, you know, days after he gave, he physically gave Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or I forget if that was the exact medal, some very high, I think it was not that one. It was, he gave them a very high presidential honor for their work on that committee. And then three, I mean, he comes around to like the sort of turducken of conspiracy theories in this post is that he says, the fact is they, meaning the pardoned people, were probably responsible

for the documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the worst president in the history of our country, Crooked Joe Biden. So what Trump is doing is he's accusing, you know, Liz Cheney, Benny Thompson, these people of somehow hatching and carrying out this scheme to forge their own pardon documents and get them in front of the president all while he is still a president behind his back. I mean, it's this it's this transparently stupid, transparently ludicrous allegation. And it would be really funny if the upshot of it were not Donald Trump wants to obliterate his predecessor's pardon powers in order to go after his political enemies today. Yeah, he gave Liz Cheney and many times the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Yeah, I mean, the conceit here is preposterous. I guess we can just put a finer point on that and then we can dispense with it. Like this was obviously a massive, you know, back and forth throughout the transition, whether Joe Biden was going to pardon these people. And this is not like some random drug crime person, like at the bottom of the stack of pardons. You know, not that I'm accusing Joe Biden of absentmindedly pardoning people, but you know, who knows, you could at least listen to that argument. Like this was very well debated. People made personal pleas to the president on both sides of this, actually, that I've heard. Some of these, the pardonees did not want to be pardoned and to the president um on both sides of this actually that i've i've heard uh some of these the pardonees did not want to be pardoned and told the president as much

and so uh the then president so like i it's just ridiculous right like to say that oh this is a weekend of bernie's situation and like nira tandem was doing this by herself right without like without no without him knowing. It's ridiculous. And it is, the conceit though is necessary for this fascistic purpose, right? That he wants to go after his political foes. I mean, there's a new book Alex Eisenstadt has out about the transition

and he's writing that Trump said, like sarcastically to aides, listen, everybody, there'll be no retribution. There'll be no revenge, wink, wink. I mean, like, he's not exactly being subtle about this. And the people at the top of his revenge list are the people that went after him over January 6. And this is essentially, you know, his fig leaf for being able to do that. This is one of those Trump stories, right? I mean, these come around all the time, where where Trump is like, actually, I get to do whatever I want today. And the reason

is because of the Foreign Enemies Act of 1798, or this weird loophole about the auto pin where like, where everybody kind of has to scramble and be like, Oh, what is the deal with this? I mean, like, like this, the auto pin has not been a major locus of controversy because nobody's tried to pull this shit off before. Right. That Trump's trying to do today. So we were kind of looking into some of this stuff this morning, writing the newsletter. And the question was kind of like, well, has Trump used the auto pin much like that? Like, is this is this a thing that he occasionally has done, which which really the answer seems to be no. He very rarely availed himself of that during his first term. And it's kind of funny because like when you think about it, has there ever been like a human being who likes signing his own name more than Donald Trump? I mean, he lives, he lives to write that, that big Sharpie signature down on

any piece of paper in front of him. It's like the idea that I feel like the idea of using an auto pen that any president would is kind of like outrageous and kind of grotesque to him in particular. The other thing, though, I mean, like it is interesting. I don't know what's going to happen next because because because the it does seem like there's one guy who's pretty well equipped to offer some insight into the mind of Joe Biden during those during the those pardon moments in his last days of his presidency. And that would be Joe Biden.

Right. I mean, like, are we going to see him come to camera today or this week or something and be like, hey, remember those pardons I issued? Those were me. I did those. Those were not, those were not, you know, like, yeah, near a tandem going behind my back or something like that. I wanted those people pardoned and that's why I pardoned them. I mean, like, you don't usually see stuff like that from former presidents. They kind of tend to try to fade. One formerly former president accepted. They usually try to kind of fade back and be apolitical and just kind of tend to their legacies and stuff.

But I mean, it really kind of seems like we should see Joe Biden speak to this because this is a really, really aggressive, like insanely, insanely destructive move. And it's something he has some knowledge of yeah and unfortunately we'd have to actually see him like i don't think sending a tweet would really solve this because then people would be like this you know the person that did the auto pen also did the tweet you know right it was the identical and look like like not to like totally absolve joe biden because like if he had not been such a like rictus corpse of a person that they tried to cover

up for that stuff for a long time like i feel like this stuff would not land uh as as effectively as it does but but also we're way past that i mean yeah i mean who cares i would just make up something else i mean i look there's nobody with less love for uh the way that president biden acted in 2024 than me but like come on this is ridiculous would, you know, prop up some other fucking excuse by which they could do this, you know, some other reason why they didn't have to follow the law. I mean, that is your whole point. Like this is not the only example of this that we've seen, right?

Like there are all these ludicrous, you know, rationales that they provide for doing whatever Donald Trump wants. And, you know, Kim Whaley is a legal analyst for us, uh, uh, said this this morning, which I think is pretty, is right. Like no matter, like, even if this is ridiculous on its face and it's going to get dismissed in any court, like the, the process is the punishment kind of for trying, I'm sure Trump would love to see these people go to jail, but they didn't do any crimes. So, uh, that's going to be pretty challenging for him unless he unless

he wants to just become full putin um which you know i think is probably not on the on the list for 2025 but tbt down the line but um the uh you know the point that whaley makes is that you know this this will now lead to uh an expensive legal battle and like the day and that there will be damage already done to these folks. You know, particularly, I mean, the ones that are in Congress, probably less so, but like particularly to the ones that are, you know, in private life and that we're like just kind of doing their jobs. One thing that that that kind of tripped my mind this morning is it really made me think back to like all the people who, especially in Trump's first term, used to be like, oh, you know, you people who want to say he's like a neophyte fascist or something like that. It's like a guy with these authoritarian aspirations.

Like that's so silly. Like he's such a silly man. He's so goofy. He's so unserious, all of that stuff. And like he is a silly man. He is goofy and unserious. His post last night was goofy and unserious, like like it was like performance art the way he was like attaching, like fingers on with no pushback from anybody like that's an authoritarian and you can do a lot of damage despite being that way uh to to these people to to to anybody to all the different people he's going after right now so yeah it's just it's yet another front in the war and it's uh it's a really serious thing little fingers the short-fingered uh authoritarian um all right uh benny thompson's out with the statement saying he's not afraid of trump's latest midnight rant and has no basis in reality. So good on Benny Thompson. We'll keep monitoring this.

Everybody go subscribe to the Morning Shots newsletter with Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol. I'll be back with more on this with Bill later today. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Tim. McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag.

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