He can do that - presidents have a long history of abusing pardons. Trump has shown he is happy to pardon people without much thought either for media attention (j6?) or for money (levandowski?).
On the other hand trump isn't very loyal to his people so far - remember the wasteland of trump advisors and officials in the first term getting convicted of various frauds without getting pardoned (or the lawyer on tape saying he needs a pardon for trying to overturn the election and him not getting it).
Not that it matters but I don't think Biden gave a blanket pardon to his entire staff I think he pardoned people who he thinks are dangerously and unfairly targeted by some extreme media like fauci and Bidens son hunter.
At the end of the day pretty much all of the limits of presidential power come from restraint, especially (but not exclusively) in todays world of a tame judiciary. If the president cares about or wants to be seen as caring about the rule of law it is a bad look to wantonly disregard it too often.
Yes, there are a lot of folks who want to believe everything their chosen guy does is absolutely right but realistically each bad thing chips away at their ability to ignore the evidence. I know several people who have lost faith in trump as the evidence continues to absolutely pile up that he doesn't match the values they were told to appreciate (rule of law, respect for the constitution, human rights, fairness, Christian values, intelligence). If he gives a blanket pardon to everyone that worked for him a few more people will say "wait, maybe the other side was right and this IS a huge abuse" so it's possible, especially if we continue to have elections, that we won't see this kind of thing.
This is probably what the DOGE kids are being pitched. There is a reason the most wantonly criminal conduct is coming from those too stupid or naïve to understand we haven't transitioned to a one-party state.
We haven’t? What power do the Dems hold, and what power do they have a serious chance of getting back in ‘26 or ‘28?
The DNC would have to make some serious changes, because the 2024 election was a perfect opinion poll on whether they have enough voters onboard the platform they’ve adopted to win a national election or a swing-state election. Running against a joke of a man, they lost. And the entire Democratic Party still hasn’t admitted to themselves why that happened.
I do hope a good third party moves into the massive power vacuum left by the DNC when it chased itself out of the mainstream into irrelevancy.
Everyone in this administration has to know they’re spending the decade after Trump in front of the Congress and various investigators.