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Will Trump pardon Snowden? that will be interesting.
by rbreve 6y ago
Will Trump pardon Snowden? that will be interesting.
- mlang23 6y agoNow would be about the best time for him to make that move. With elections upcoming and all that.
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoTrump's pardoning of Snowden would lose more presidential election support than it would win. Sure, there are plenty of people who would support the decision to pardon Snowden, but I can't see them being the type of people to vote for Trump based on that. Existing Trump supporters, on the other hand, I could see "punishing" Trump for his weakness in pardoning a "traitor who fled to Russia".
- differentView 6y agoHe can pardon him to test the effects on polling. If it helps, great. If it hurts him, get Snowden back, arrest him, and claim it was a trick to get the traitor that Obama couldn't get all along.
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoIs un-pardoning a thing? I'd have figured that a pardon would mean that Trump wouldn't be able to follow it up with his arrest and claiming the pardon was a 'trick'. Just writing that, though, it feels dirtily and precisely "Trump". edit: grammar
- boomboomsubban 6y agoYou pardon certain crimes. As an example, you pardon Snowden for "all crimes related to NSA leaks," and then charge him with some kind if tax avoidance. It'd be dirty as hell, and make any trial much longer, but it's possible.
- throwaways885 6y agoEh... the old neocons aren't the same breed of conservative that is the Trump supporters. They seem very much in favour of pardoning Snowden.
- lazyjones 6y agoThe media and the DNC would spin it as proof Trump is controlled by Russia. That's far more certain than some Republican voters disagreeing with the idea after considering this judgment.
- Applejinx 6y agoNo, they like Russia, and would be happy to consider Snowden's previous masters 'the Deep State'. The trouble there is that it only furthers a status where 'everything that is not literally Trump is the Deep State and must be destroyed'. It's seriously weird to have a President and a large faction of Americans actively working to fight America as it currently stands. I'm sympathetic to ideas of reform, but they're not talking about reform, they're talking in terms like rounding up all those people and putting 'em in camps as unredeemable criminals/enemies. Nobody going on about 'Deep State' or 'Pizzagate' etc. are talking about reforms, they are behaving like it's an occupying army of absolute monsters that could never possibly be reformed or improved.
- jacobush 6y ago“Caesar” became a hereditary title when Rome shifted from Republic to dictatorship. I sometimes wonder if “President” will be the same.
- spookythrow 6y agoYou assume it is possible for Trump to lose presidential support. Just as he said, "I could shoot somebody in the middle of 5th avenue and not lose voters". People don't care who gets elected, they really just vote party-line. However, if Snowden were pardoned, and Cannabis were legalized, I do think Trump would win centrist and libertarians.
- capableweb 6y agoI don't see how anything else could happen here, unless the USA is truly a lawless country where the rich and powerful is in control without any consequences. So yeah, Snowden will still be on the run.
- kome 6y agoI fully agree. USA is lawless, for example U.S. blacklists International Criminal Court prosecutor over Afghanistan war crimes probe: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-icc-sanctions/u-s-blacklists-icc-prosecutor-over-afghanistan-war-crimes-probe-idUSKBN25T2DX https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-icc-sanctions/u-s-bla...
- 3636388373 6y agoThe US is not a member of the ICC, if the Europeans want to pretend to matter outside of Europe then they can force the issue and see how well that goes. Otherwise, they should stick to being a trade pig for the rest of the world.
- Applejinx 6y agoYeah, this needs to be fixed (not simply made worse and worse)
- readarticle 6y agoInternational law doesn’t exist as we would understand it, the global system’s inherent anarchy and thus lack of law, or lawlessness, is essentially axiomatic in IR. It may seem nitpicky, but I genuinely don’t think people understand how utterly anarchic geopolitics is, even at the height of unipolar stability in decades past.
- malwarebytess 6y agoIt's going to the supreme court which will overturn I guarantee it.
- marvy 6y ago
- hablameiato 6y agoTrump's base is very pro-military and a lot of them believe that Snowden put military lives at risk (and also confuse him with Chelsea Manning / Julian Assange). So I don't see how that could ever happen.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoThat might prevent it from happening before the election, but win or lose he's still President between November and January and win or lose this is his last election.
- jacobush 6y agoLast election? If he wins, I’m not sure. Even Communist countries held “elections”.
- croon 6y agoWhich is ironic seeing how Assange helped him get elected.
- jliptzin 6y agoYou would think that with all the baseless complaining he’s been doing on Twitter about Obama “spying” on his campaign in 2016 he’d say see! This was illegal after all. Let’s pardon Snowden and fix this so that future presidential candidates can’t be spied on like I was. He’d have the support of both the left and the right even though he wasn’t actually illegally spied on.
- raxxorrax 6y agoWould make him more popular.
- betterunix2 6y agoWhy should anyone think that would happen? Trump has no particular moral standard, does not particularly care whether or not laws are being followed, and only does what he believes will get some applause from his base at any given moment (and his base could not care less about Snowden).
- havetocharge 6y agoAfter he releases his tax records.