Frustration with House Speaker Mike Johnson was apparently one of the factors that drove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to announce her resignation from Congress late last month. Now, Rep. Nancy Mace is considering doing the same. And Johnson is openly feuding with Rep. Elise Stefanik. Wtf we love Mike Johnson now? Happy Thursday.

What About Bob?

by Andrew Egger

Donald Trump, as a rule, hates Democrats. They’re radical left anti-American communists and domestic terrorists, after all. But every once in a while, Trump bumps into a Democrat that turns out to be a kindred spirit, someone he can really relate to.

Typically, they’re the ones who have been accused—and occasionally convicted—of corruption crimes.

Yesterday brought the latest such unexpected breakthrough of human feeling. In a Truth Social post Wednesday morning, Trump announced he would pardon “Highly Respected Congressman” Henry Cuellar of Texas, whom he said had been targeted by the Biden administration because he “bravely spoke out against Open Borders, and the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe.’”

Trump politely declined to mention the actual reason Cuellar was under federal indictment: because he allegedly had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexico-based bank in exchange for promises to work to shift U.S. policy in a direction favorable to those entities. Cuellar, the indictment alleged, took pains to hide those payments from scrutiny—squirreling them away in accounts connected to shell companies under his wife Imelda Cuellar’s name.¹

Semafor’s Dave Weigel wrote last year of Trump’s “giant soft spot for indicted Democrats,” which during his first term included pardons or commutations for former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Republicanshave had a good batting average landing Trump pardons for corruption charges too: Just ask former Reps. Duncan Hunter, Chris Collins, and George Santos.

But this year, Trump’s pardon habit has gone from an occasional indulgence to a full-blown lifestyle. Even as he fantasizes in public about police roughing up “criminals” and looks for pretexts to throw his political enemies in prison, the president’s blanket sympathy for anybody else accused of white collar criminality is reaching astonishing heights. He’s issuing pardons to congressmen without bothering to tip off the speaker of the House first. He’s even undoing indictments that his own Justice Department is issuing: Last night, as we were finishing up this newsletter, Trump pardoned a real estate developer who was facing charges of corruptly rigging an arena-building bidding process at the University of Texas to favor his own company. The president is on an epic binge.

Trump has issued pardons and clemency to January 6 rioters, to disgraced ex-congressman, and to anyone who seems willing to stuff the coffers of one of his political committees or family crypto businesses. His impulse to issue get-out-of-jail free cards has extended to global leaders: He’s actively encouraged Israel’s president to pardon its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and taken a hostile diplomatic and economic posture toward Brazil over its jailing of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Most recently, as we wrote this week, he pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was facing 45 years in U.S. federal prison over drug and corruption charges.

Ultimately, this impulse to give clemency to bad people—something that every other president at least had the shame to wait to do until their last day in office—is rooted in what Weigel called Trump’s monomyth: “that the justice system he’s tangled with throughout his business and political careers is crooked, picking favorites and treating its enemies unfairly.” Trump has remarkably few core beliefs, but this conviction is one, and one he holds deeply enough that corruption charges seem to improve his feelings about a politician rather than the opposite. If the system’s coming after them, they must be doing something right!

Which makes you wonder: How much longer is Trump going to make former senator and accused gold-bar aficionado Bob Menendez twist in the wind?

These days, Menendez is starting to stand out as the one prominent former member of Congress jailed on corruption charges who hasn’t been lucky enough to retrieve a Trump pardon. Menendez’s case, after all, mirrors Cuellar’s in striking ways: Both netted hundreds of thousands of dollars from entities connected to foreign governments—Egypt and Qatar, in Menendez’s case—in exchange for promises to steer U.S. policy in those governments’ favor. (Menendez was in a particularly useful perch from which to do so, as he formerly chaired the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.