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I was back on NewsNation last night, in person from the great city of Chicago, to debate the midterms and the state of the economy with my buddy Leland Vittert. Across from me was self-proclaimed “Trumpocrat” and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Something happened in the middle of that segment that I haven’t been able to shake, and I want to talk to you about it.
For those of you who don’t remember Rod Blagojevich, let me remind you who this guy is.
He was the Democratic governor of Illinois who got caught trying to essentially sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat after Obama won the presidency in 2008. Blagojevich had the power to appoint Obama’s replacement, and instead of treating that responsibility as a public trust, he saw an opportunity to get something for himself.
He was also convicted in a corruption case involving an attempt to pressure a children’s hospital executive for campaign contributions.
He was convicted on multiple federal corruption charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison. This was a governor abusing the power of his office for personal and political gain.
And then Donald Trump came along.
In 2020, Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence after he’d served about eight years, letting him walk out of prison roughly six years early. Then, in February 2025, Trump went even further and gave him a full and unconditional pardon.
Think about that for a second.
A man who tried to use his public office as something he could trade for personal benefit was rescued from prison by Donald Trump. And now that same man was sitting across from me on national television, defending the president who let him out.
When the conversation turned to the war in Iran, Blagojevich a man convicted on numerous fraud charges and later pardoned by Donald Trump, started parroting MAGA talking points almost word for word. The economy was great before the war, he said, but Iran was so determined to get a nuclear weapon that Trump had no choice but to step in and spare the world from a nuclear Iran.
That is complete and total bullshit. Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, confirmed Iran was nowhere near having a nuclear weapon. This was a war of choice, plain and simple — and the economy sucked before the war.
So in that moment, I chose to push back pretty damn hard. I called Blagojevich out for repeating the Republican line because Donald Trump gave him a pardon.
Because that’s the deal. Pardons don’t just set people free anymore. They buy loyalty. You can commit a crime, abuse your power and betray the public’s trust, and do basically whatever you want, and if you know the right person, if you’ve got enough money to put in the right back pocket, you get a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The price is that you spend the rest of your life defending the guy who gave it to you. Rod Blagojevich is the proof.
This is a man who is still barred from holding public office in Illinois because of the crimes he committed. And yet he’s been welcomed into the MAGA movement and right-wing media circles with open arms, because he’s useful to them. He gets to pretend he’s still a Democrat, when in reality he’s a single-issue voter. And that single issue is keeping himself out of prison.
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The people watching at home deserve to know that’s what’s going on. They deserve to know why this guy is saying what he’s saying. So you know damn well, I wasn’t going to sit there and let it slide.
It’s especially infuriating right now, when this country is really struggling. The economy is a disaster, and this week’s inflation numbers are horrible — back up to 3.7 percent. Gas prices are up more than 34 percent from a year ago. And nearly half a million bankruptcy cases have been filed in the first nine months of this year alone, up 11 percent from the same period last year.
The war in Iran is spiraling out of control, and the only reason it isn’t even worse right now is that Trump is waiting until after the midterms to start bombing again, when he no longer feels he has to worry about voters delivering an immediate political reckoning.
These are the moments when Americans most need straight answers. But instead, we’re being gaslit with talking points from people with a personal stake in keeping Trump happy.
Too much of the media treats all of it like a game. Like it’s ESPN breaking down the tale of the tape, instead of just being honest about what’s happening. The “I’m a Trumpocrat, I don’t recognize the Democratic Party” routine gets played as if it were a real perspective, when it’s really just garbage.
It does a real disservice to the people sitting at home. Look, the average American may not be as politically engaged as I am. Most people are just trying to pay their bills, and figure out who’s actually on their side. That’s incredibly hard to do when you can’t trust a single word coming out of the mouths of so many of these MAGA influencers.
And this brings me back to the title of this piece: The price of Trump’s pardons.
For the people receiving them, the price is loyalty. You get your freedom, your reputation gets rehabilitated, and in return, you’re expected to defend the man who made it possible.
But the price for the rest of us is something much bigger.
It’s the idea that justice is supposed to mean something in this country. That if you abuse your public office, you will be held accountble. That the law applies to the powerful just as surely as it applies to the rest of us.
And it’s the ability to turn on the television and hear an honest argument about what’s happening in this country without having to wonder what the person making it owes the president.
That’s what we’re losing. And once that trust is gone, it’s a hell of a lot harder to get back than it was to destroy.
I’ll end this the way I’ve ended a lot of these pieces lately, because I think it’s the most important point:
The level of corruption, criminality, self-dealing, and self-interest we’re living through in America today is unprecedented. That means the solutions to make sure it never happens again have to be unprecedented too. I never once thought about reforming the presidential pardon power until I watched Donald Trump turn it into a way to buy loyalty, and then watched one of the people he bought sit across from me on live TV.
Now I can’t stop thinking about it, and how to prepare the Democratic Party for the many uncomfortable decisions that need to be made to make sure this never happens again.
With urgency,
—Mike
Why aren't the Dems going into offense against Trump?
How about:
1) getting together all the military officers that have been fired by Hegseth and Trump and have them sue the government for being terminated without csuse, or make it a “constructive termination” issue?
2) Have the Dems financially back all the court costs of any senior politician or military leader fired by Trump or attacked in court by Trump. In addition to direct funding immediately, they should organize GoFundMe pages for all the people indicted by Trump illegally.
3) Blue state governors should be training their National Guards to get out and surround and protect all ballot areas that will be used in the Nov. Midterm elections. They should do training exercises now, so the National Guard in each state can be used to protect voters from interference by ICE and the 1000 DOJ observers.
4) The Democrats should be putting pressure on all the pussilsnimous law firms that caved into Trump and make it public how much money those firms are paying an authoritarian anti-Democracy POTUS. Ditto for large corporations like CBS, Amazon and Oracle.
Finally, why are the Dems not organizing more work stoppages and national boycotts against corporations supporting Trump. And why are they not recognizing those corporations that are trying to fight Trump?
The Democrats are pathetic. They only play defense. They wait for Trump to do something illegal, and then they try to use the courts to correct it.
How about aggressively suing the DOJ and other government departments BEORE they act illegally again?
I lived in Illinois during the time of Blagojevich and I never liked the fact that Trump helped him get out of jail. I agree with you about everything that you said and that people now days think they can do whatever they want to do and then pass it by Trump or his aids and they can get a clean bill of health. This is not the way things should be working. We are becoming a country like all the countries that we have fought against all of my life. We are becoming no better than they are and I hope that is not really what the American majority actually wants. I do feel that in some ways we are really trying to do the right thing but he and his loyal people move so fast that it is hard to keep up with all the bad things. That is the way he does things. Do it now and ask questions or give answers later when it has already been done and there is no other way except to agree with him. I personally have NEVER agreed with him even before he was even thinking about running for President. We must work together to stop him from completely destroying our country. Thank you for everything you comment on about these subjects. I read what you write every chance I get.