Edition · December 24, 2020
Christmas Eve Pardon Surge, Same Old Rot
Trump spent December 24 stuffing the pardon box with allies and keeping the election-lie machine humming, even as Washington was already bracing for the next round of fallout.
On December 24, 2020, Trump delivered a holiday heat check for the swampiest instincts of his post-election presidency: a fresh burst of clemency for allies and an ongoing refusal to let the election lie die. The biggest Trump-world screwups of the day were less about one dramatic headline than the ugly pattern they confirmed — loyalty beats principle, and losing means never having to say you lost.
Closing take
Christmas Eve was supposed to be quiet. Instead, Trump used it like a clearinghouse for grievance, favoritism, and denial — which, by late 2020, was basically the brand. The damage was not just reputational; it was institutional, legal, and contagious.
Story
DOJ Pressure
Confidence 5/5
★★★★★Fuckup rating 5/5
Five-alarm fuckup
Freshly disclosed notes and emails showed Trump’s team pressing Justice Department officials to validate his baseless claims that the 2020 election was corrupt. The material pointed to direct pressure on Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue at the very moment the department was trying to stay out of Trump’s political meltdown. It was another concrete sign that the president was willing to use federal law enforcement as a prop in his attempt to overturn the result.
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Pardon Payoff
Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
The White House used Christmas Eve to issue a fresh round of pardons that included some of Trump’s closest political and personal allies, extending a pattern that made clemency look less like mercy than loyalty reward. The list revived anger over the administration’s willingness to hand out extraordinary favors to people with ties to the president, his orbit, or his family. The optics were especially ugly because the action landed right as Trump was still trying to sell himself as a law-and-order president.
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Election denial spiral
Confidence 4/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
Even after more losses for his election challenges, Trump kept pushing false claims of fraud and refused to let the transition settle. That kept the party, the courts, and the country trapped in a manufactured crisis.
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Shutdown Threat
Confidence 4/5
★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5
Major mess
After Congress passed a pandemic relief and government funding package, Trump signaled he might blow it up unless lawmakers changed the spending levels and direct payments. The threat injected fresh uncertainty into the year-end budget process and raised the risk of a shutdown fight with only days to spare. It was classic Trump: take a messy but workable deal and make it worse out of pure performance politics.
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Pardon favor factory
Confidence 3/5
★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5
Major mess
Trump used Christmas Eve to hand out more clemency, extending a pattern of favoring politically connected allies and backers while the rest of the country was still trying to get a straight answer about his refusal to accept the election results.
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