White House spokesman offers bizarro explanation for Trump's pardon spree

If you include the long, long campaign season, we are roughly five years into our Donald Trump hell. During that time, Trump has told thousands of lies. Layers upon layers of lies. And not only does he surround himself with people who do the same, but he demands it of them. Ask Sean Spicer, or ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who so struggled to answer for or repeat Donald Trump’s lies from the White House podium that she stopped having press conferences altogether.

Enter Hogan Gidley, principal deputy White House press secretary, a man with a penchant for delivering dizzying talking points in the White House driveway while standing under a $400 Burberry umbrella that matches his pocket handkerchief and his $2,000 raincoat. It’s a wonder these folks were able to convince a large swath of Americans that they represent blue-collar families, but I digress.

Gidley hit the television network, the only one the White House talks to, to explain Donald Trump’s most recent head-scratching pardons, and he offered an equally head-scratching explanation of why he chose these particular people to pardon.

“The president is against aggressive sentencing.” Excuse me, what? The man spent two years leading “Lock her up” chants about his political rival. He literally campaigned on aggressively sentencing his political opponent for the crime of … something something.

It was only a week ago that Trump said he admired China for holding quick trials and executing drug dealers. His exact words: "Countries with a powerful death penalty, with a fair but quick trial, they have very little if any drug problem. That includes China."

Wouldn’t the death penalty after a “quick trial” be the most aggressive sentence of all?

That wasn’t the first time that Donald Trump has expressed support for executing drug dealers. He’s reportedly mentioned the idea to aides many times since taking office, citing the policies of Singapore and the Philippines.

Of course, what’s really at play here is yet another example of our two justice systems—one for powerful white men and their allies, and one for the rest of us. Defrauding people is just the cost of doing business to people like Trump. Prison and punishment are for the little people in $20 rain jackets, or political opponents they don’t like, not for Burberry men like themselves. Transactions like pardons and clemency are simply another form of currency for men like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Expect to see Bernard Kerik return the favor by continuing to heavily praise and promote Trump on Fox News, something he’s been inexplicably booked to do in recent months despite his conviction on corruption charges, for peddling his influence as NYC’s top police officer for his own personal gain.

At the end of the day, it’s more lies, more shame, more of a stain on this nation and the idea of law and order.

UPDATE: Guess who will be praising Donald Trump on Fox News tonight?