I just returned from vacation to learn that President Donald Trump in a tweet has floated the idea of pardoning himself. He doesn’t seem to believe he has ever done anything wrong; he’s a celebrity, after all, and hugely rich, and can therefore, he says, do anything with impunity. So I’m uncertain which act he was thinking of pardoning in himself.
When I heard, I’m afraid what instantly came into my mind was the scene in “Schindler’s List,” wherein concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth, played with such frightening intensity by Ralph Fiennes, looks at himself in the mirror and, raising a hand in papal benediction, says to his reflection, “I forgive you.”
I won’t suggest we are quite to the point of camps (see: immigrants) and wholesale slaughter (see: draconian Medicaid cuts), but Trump’s megalomania and unparalleled ignorance of presidential powers is an ongoing source of shame before the world, not to say downright alarm, even fear, for our future as a nation.
Now with this grotesque notion of self-pardon, one can only wonder, who does he think he is? Idi Amin? To that, the answer is probably, yes.
Michele Margetts
Salt Lake City