In Hope Of Gaining A Presidential Pardon, Rod Blagojevich Humiliates Himself Defending Trump
Rod Blagojevich must be getting so tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for Trump. Still facing 5 more years behind bars and perhaps realizing that it is now or never for him in terms of gaining a presidential pardon, the former governor of Illinois wrote a ridiculous op-ed for the far right conspiracy website Newsmax, favorably comparing Trump's travails with the Democrats to a fantasized way Blago imagines Abraham Lincoln might have been treated if Nancy Pelosi were around in 1860. He poses his belief that Pelosi would have impeached the Great Emancipator.
Clearly Blagojevich wants to catch Trump's attention and hopes the crook president will reward the crook governor with early release from his prison term. My personal guess is that Trump wouldn't pee on Blago if he was on fire, and will enjoy tormenting the ex-governor by throwing hints he will give a pardon but then never do so. Trump has that sort of level of gratuitous cruelty, even towards a loyal bootlicker like Blago.
Blago was of course , a Democrat all his political career, but at this stage his loyalty is for sale to the first person who might get him out of the slammer.
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I, like most people from my home state of Illinois, am a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln.
Recently I've wondered what would have happened had Nancy Pelosi been the Speaker of the House when Abraham Lincoln was president.
Would Speaker Pelosi's House Democrats use the same flimsy impeachment standard they are currently using to impeach Honest Abe, one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country?
In 1998 I was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the Clinton impeachment, and in 2009, as the 40th governor of Illinois, I had the unhappy experience of being impeached and removed from office.
Nevertheless, I offer this interesting and unique perspective about impeachment as I sit here in prison.
Consider the possibilities.
First, today's Democrats would have impeached Lincoln for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power when he unilaterally issued his Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln didn't ask Congress for permission when he declared an end to nearly 250 years of slavery and offered freedom to millions of slaves in the American South. He neither consulted Congress nor sought its consent before he acted.
In fact, at the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the Democrats of that day opposed it.
And then there's the matter of the job offer to Robert E. Lee. Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter by secessionists in South Carolina, and one day after Virginia seceded from the Union, President Lincoln sent an emissary to Robert E. Lee to offer him command of the Northern armies.
General Lee declined the offer.
When his native state of Virginia left the Union, General Lee left with it, eventually going on to become the commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia and the greatest military leader of the Civil War.
Can't you see how a Speaker Pelosi and many of today's House Democrats would call for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate Lincoln for "Confederate Collusion” and bring impeachment charges for abuse of power for offering the top military command to a guy who would go on to become the top military commander of the other side?
And surely, articles of impeachment would be brought against Lincoln by today's House Democrats for suspending the writ of habeas corpus across the Union as it related to traitors, spies, prisoners of war and Union soldiers.
And then there's the political side.
Would Lincoln face impeachment for some of the activities by his political aides who helped him secure the Republican Presidential nomination at their party's convention held in Chicago in 1860?
Today's Democrats would have argued that the routine horse trading employed by Lincoln's political operatives at the convention was bribery and that Lincoln should be impeached.
It is commonly known among historians that in order to gain the support of the delegate-rich Pennsylvania delegation, Lincoln's aides offered a cabinet position to Simon Cameron, the senator from that state.
After Pennsylvania voted to nominate Lincoln, Cameron was appointed Secretary of War.
Undoubtedly, today's House Democrats would bring impeachment charges against Lincoln labeling that routine political log rolling an illegal quid pro quo.
Would today's House Democrats seek the impeachment of Lincoln for his campaign's use of unconventional political tactics?
Taking a page from the playbook that would later be associated with the old-style Chicago Democrat machine, Lincoln's campaign aides made full use of their home-field advantage by printing 5,000 counterfeit tickets to the Republican convention to pack the halls with Lincoln supporters.
This tactic worked. With throngs of Lincoln supporters in the convention hall gallery cheering on their favorite son, a steamroller effect was created that led to the dark-horse Lincoln winning the nomination on the third ballot.
Would today's House Democrats impeach Lincoln for alleged fraudulent practices at the convention claiming he was an illegitimate president?
Two generations before Abraham Lincoln led the struggle to preserve our fractured nation through the crucible of civil war, the Framers of our Constitution established the criteria to impeach a president.
They rejected the weaponizing of impeachment as a political tool by expressly limiting it to "treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors."
They did this because they foresaw how tempting the use of impeachment could be to advance partisan ends.
Indeed, Alexander Hamilton warned of the great danger that the decision to impeach a president could be made for political reasons, "on the comparative strength of parties," rather than on the limited and expressed criteria written in the Constitution.
It is hard to imagine how history would have been changed had Lincoln been impeached. Thankfully, that never happened.
But to think that it could have happened is a reminder of how fragile our Republic is and how vulnerable our freedoms are.
No president is safe if a majority of hyperpartisan House members from the opposition party are willing to abuse the Constitution and vote to impeach.
And the worst part of it is, that should this happen, those politicians are taking from the people their right to choose their own leaders though free elections.
So much for "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" not perishing from this earth.
Rod Blagojevich served as the 40th governor of Illinois, 2003-09.
To what will undoubtedly be Rod Blagojevich's eternal shame he seems to favorably compare Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln, and goes so far as to draw some sort of equivalency between Trump's attempts to get foreign governments to interfere in American elections with Lincoln's attempts to free the slaves.
Blago got a raw deal when he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the same type of illegal behavior by politicians that usually draws much lighter sentences. But the truth is he is a shameless hack who wanted to gain financially, from his luck in being elected to high state office . Now he wants a kindred soul , President* Trump, to reward him for bowing and scraping in bizarre and humiliating fealty.
I say he has wasted his time.
Rod Blagojevich was on Trump's (scripted) "reality" show The Apprentice.
Naturally, Trump fired him.
When Lincoln was elected his brand new Republican Party was the liberal party. At that time The Democratic Party was the racist conservative party. I'm surprised they didn't try to impeach Lincoln. The tables have turned over the last 150+ years. If Lincoln was alive today he would be a Democrat.
Trump defenders seem to often show a bizarre desire to cast him in a favorable light alongside Lincoln. They must be doing some powerful drugs. Or maybe Trump gets the word out somehow that he enjoys being mentioned in the same breath as our greatest president.
Well Lincoln and Trump were both called monkeys and n8888r lovers and burned in effigy multiple times...
Ooops, sorry that was Lincoln & Obama, WHAT was I thinking?
That's an interesting way to spell the "N-word".
They published something by this loser. No one else on planet Earth had anything ready to go? Anything for clicks, huh?
And Trump put that loser on The Apprentice.
Anything for ratings, huh?
And NBC put The Apprentice on the air. For years. So yeah, anything for ratings.
Funny how much of what appears on NewMax ends up in Trump tweets.
It's almost as if he reads it everyday, lol.
We don’t use your media. We have our own alternative media such as World Net Daily, Conservative News Service, [deleted] to use. I have not watched a 30 minute ABC, NBC, CBS or full PBS news hour episode since we got Fox News on our cable system in the year 2000. The bottom line is that we will communicate with the left through our media or not at all. If Facebook, Google, and the IFCN and all repress the alternative media on their platforms, the conservatives will simply create our own alternatives and create two Americas where each side only talks within its own mediums and past each other. That is preferable to us on the right being compelled to use msm to communicate. It would be better to have a total divorce and not communicate at all than be compelled to use mainstream media to do so. So yes it’s good that our President uses sources in his communications that we can’t use and I thank him for it.
That explains a lot.
I can see why - that way the right wing folks can stay totally insulated from facts and reality, and can keep living in the land of delusions. It's amazing how hard some people will work to remain willfully ignorant. And those idiotic rags probably don't post much about science, which is also necessary for some of this ignorance to continue to thrive.
They want to live in echo chambers that protect the from actual facts and only their own perspective reverberates. Anything that differs from their views can be labelled "fake" and they can disregard it.
Hard to tell from here.............pot or kettle
It shows. Only by turning off and tuning out reality could the conservative alt-right create their own universe of alt-facts that support their beliefs regardless of evidence, logic or reason. I applaud you for at least being able to admit you don't even try to listen to both sides and come to your own decision, you apparently prefer to just blindly accept whatever comes from the right wing puke funnel and just swallow it down regardless of the rancid smell or taste.
I've never understood the appeal for utter ignorance, but they brag about it and are clearly proud of their ability to avoid all facts and remain delusional.
Psychologically, studies show that right wingers are far more afraid (including fear of change) and show less compassion than liberals - I guess a fantasy world is necessary when you're like that.
They are drowning in denial.
Who is this "we" you are speaking for (again) and what is "my" media?
What a ridiculous rant. Are we communicating through the MSM? Really?
From your comments it seems to be the total opposite.
btw Newsmax is totally acceptable here and everywhere else I imagine.
smh...
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[identical to comment #1]
That's fucking hilarious!
Rod Blagojevich is a former corrupt Democratic governor who is in prison for attempting to sell a senate seat. He decides to kiss Trumps ass in an attempt to get a pardon. When he produces an idiotic rant to impress Trump he suddenly becomes the poster boy of the White-wing.
The Republicans are desperately grasping at straws to deflect the heat away from the criminal in the White House.
In connecting these statements to Trump's impeachment woes, Blagojevich is trying to equate the Emancipation Proclamation with Trump's phone call to Ukraine trying to get dirt on Biden. 8 years in prison has made Blago stir crazy.
Blagojevich is tired of sucking rods so he hopes kissing ass will get him out.
Lincoln didn't ask Congress for permission when he declared an end to nearly 250 years of slavery
Freedom should not need permission to exist.
... he sucked plenty of rods in that pretzel logic editorial. lucky for him the wife is 55 and neither of his 2 daughters look like inflatable sex dolls since he just reminded horndog POTUS where their daddy was.
The Donald is attracted to a "type".
He keeps getting his "girlfriends" mixed up.
Stormy is on the left. Ivanka is on the right.
The meme goes with the set-up: "He keeps getting his "girlfriends" mixed up."
He once accidentally paid Ivanka $130K. He had to get Michael Cohen to fix that.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn Trump used to withhold Ivanka's allowance till she gave her daddy his goodnight "kisses"...
"Your daddy's a star honey, I can do anything I want...I can even admit that on tape and my future supporters won't give a fart about it, they'll continue to lavish me with praise. I can even tell them I don't even wait for consent and just start grabbing girls I find attractive by the pussy and they'll still support me. Hell, I can get caught paying hundreds of thousands to my porn star kissing whores to keep them quiet about my numerous affairs and my evangelical support will only increase, it's like incredible...".
We live in sick and twisted times, with sick and twisted people who support a sick and twisted President.
There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
Ivanka starting earning her "allowance" when she was very young.
Ahhhh, now I get it.
Ah.....nothing like learning the well sought after and coveted skill set of the lap dancer.
Her skills qualify her to be the next Ambassador to Poland.
Or Poleland if you will.
That's probably how The Donald spells it.
He has discussed how "smocking" hot his daughter is on talk shows.
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My personal guess is that Trump wouldn't pee on Blago if he was on fire
*Effervescent giggle snort*
Trump is very possessive about his golden showers.
Well, he does have a purdy face. Maybe if he put on a wig and developed a Russian accent, Trump just might pee on him.
Well why the heck not.
I don't know the criteria for being eligible for a presidential pardon so I have no idea whether this case would meet it under normal presidential administrations but I am not at all surprised that criminals believe they have a good chance of getting a pass from this president and his administration.
They all seem to have a distaste for the rule of law.
Trump has no "criteria" - except one. Number one.
Since Rod Blagojevich probably doesn't have any dirt on The Donald and there wouldn't be a political benefit from a pardon, poor Blago is SOL.
Maybe, Trump can be Blago's new cellmate soon.
What pisses me off the most is now I have to practice saying his damn name again!
Just use his prison name, it is easier......Bubba's Bitch.
Fantastic!
Trump must be thrilled to find someone as bad at history as he is
JANUARY 02, 2020If he were a lesser man, he might have taken it as a career setback when he was sentenced to 14 years in prison after he tried, as Illinois governor in 2008, to sell a U.S. Senate seat for campaign contributions. But not Blago. Impeached, removed from office and convicted, he has seized the chance presented him by his confinement to reinvent himself as a leading prisoner-historian. His latest scholarly work: a New Year’s Day essay tracing some striking parallels between Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.
“I, like most people from my home state of Illinois, am a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln,” Blagojevich writes from his current home state of Colorado, location of the Federal Correctional Institution-Englewood . His own “unhappy experience,” he explains, provides “this interesting and unique perspective about impeachment as I sit here in prison.”
Blago’s perspective is indeed unique. He writes: “Today's Democrats would have impeached Lincoln for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power when he unilaterally issued his Emancipation Proclamation.” They also would have impeached him, he writes, for “Confederate collusion,” bribery and an “illegal quid pro quo.”
“It’s hard to know where to begin,” Rutgers University historian David Greenberg replied when I inquired about Blagojevich’s historical scholarship. Greenberg ultimately settled on “specious,” “sophomoric” and “nonsensical.”
But Blagojevich is likely to get rather higher grades from another eminent historian: Trump himself, who has made many important discoveries in the same field, notably that “most people don’t even know [Lincoln] was a Republican” and that Frederick Douglass “is getting recognized more and more.”
Recently, Trump has recognized his own presidency as superior to the Great Emancipator’s. He tweeted out a poll showing that a majority of Republicans think Trump is a better president than Lincoln was.
Trump further concluded that, campaigning on today’s Democratic platform, “Abraham Lincoln could not win Texas.” He seems not to have known that Lincoln couldn’t win Texas then, either; the Republican Party wasn’t even on the ballot .
Blagojevich has been angling for Trump to commute his sentence, a possibility Trump has floated; Blagojevich’s wife has made appeals on Fox News, and Blagojevich recently appeared shirtless, Putin-style, in the prison yard. But this may not be exactly the endorsement Trump wants: the most extravagantly corrupt politician of recent years defending the man who is giving him a run for that title?
Blagojevich and Trump both attempted to trade, in Blagojevich’s memorable phrase, a “f---cking valuable thing” (a Senate seat in Blagojevich’s case, military aid to Ukraine in Trump’s) for their own benefit (campaign contributions for Blagojevich, a takedown of a political opponent for Trump). Both schemes were revealed when the contents of a phone call leaked. The difference: Blagojevich’s fellow Democrats joined in drumming him from office .
Trump speaks of Blagojevich (whose pre-prison rehabilitation effort included a stint on Celebrity Apprentice) with some of the language the president also uses to defend his Ukraine entanglements: “He’s been in jail … over a phone call where nothing happened.”
Writing for the Trump-friendly website Newsmax, Blagojevich wonders “what would have happened had Nancy Pelosi been the Speaker of the House when Abraham Lincoln was president.” Well, for one, Lincoln probably would have gobbled a handful of the blue mass upon discovering that a woman was running the House 60 years before suffrage, and that there were 53 black House Democrats at a time when most African Americans were enslaved.
But Blagojevich concludes that Democrats would have impeached Lincoln for emancipating the slaves, noting that “the Democrats of that day opposed it.” Thus does Blago’s time machine skip 150 years of history in which the parties switched places on race.
He argues that today’s Democrats would have impeached Lincoln because he “didn’t ask Congress for permission when he declared an end to nearly 250 years of slavery” — ignoring Congress’s 1865 approval of the 13th Amendment.
He asserts that today’s Democrats would demand a special counsel because Lincoln offered command of the Army “to a guy who would go on to become the top military commander of the other side” — sidestepping the fact that Robert E. Lee was still a colonel in the U.S. Army when offered the job.
And Blagojevich speculates that Lincoln would face impeachment for shenanigans at political conventions, ignoring the crucial distinction: He didn’t use his official powers for personal gain, as Blagojevich and Trump both did.
Come to think of it, Trump should commute Blago’s sentence, and soon. With four more years in prison, there’s no telling how much more damage the former governor could do to U.S. history.
@ 4 thcornergal tweeted, “I hope Trump does pardon him. It will make for great ads this fall.”
And @jsweeneys wrote, “I live across the river from Illinois. I remember when this happened. Now, KNOW that Illinois is used to a little grift. They aren’t prudes about it. But I have NEVER seen the body politic so united in anger as they were at him. Everyone wanted him punished, even more than he was.”
@Woodyman502 posted, “Blogo is a Trump clown,” while
@ronh_pm wrote, “Did this man really just write close to 1000 words comparing Trump to Lincoln?”
@CitizenWonk was critical of Newsmax for even publishing the op-ed, tweeting, “Blagovich tried to sell a Senate Seat so I have to wonder about the ethics and wisdom of a publication that would publish an article on impeachment by such a person.”
And @LynneGarrison lamented, “How low have we fallen that convicted felons can write an OP-Ed, or go on Fox News to plead their case to an audience of one to try to secure a pardon?”
Blago is slime, but I don’t really see the point of him being in prison for 14 years. There are lot of people who are actually really dangerous who spend far less time behind bars.