Key events
He thinks he could have won, and says Trump complimented him: more takeaways from Biden’s interview
Elsewhere in his interview with USA Today, Joe Biden said he might have beaten Donald Trump in the November election, though is not sure he would have been able to serve the entirety of a term that would have concluded when he was at the age of 86.
He also says that the president-elect complimented his economic policies when they met following Trump’s re-election, even though the Republican had anchored his campaign on sharp criticisms of Biden’s administration.
Here’s more, from USA Today:
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“Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”, Biden said regarding whether he would have been able to handle another four years in the job. At 82, he is the oldest president ever to serve.
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Could he have won? “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden said in the interview.
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The president made his meeting with Trump sound fairly cordial. “He was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done. And he talked about − he thought I was leaving with a good record,” Biden said.
USA Today’s interview is the last one Biden has scheduled with a print journalist before he departs the White House. The president did far fewer interviews and press conference in his term than many of his recent predecessors, according to the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Preemptive pardons by American presidents are rare, but not unheard of. Should Joe Biden opt to protect prospective targets of retaliation by Donald Trump, like Anthony Fauci or Liz Cheney, from prosecution, here’s an idea of how that would work, as told by the Guardian’s Sam Levine:
Joe Biden is reportedly considering issuing a number of preemptive pardons for top critics of Donald Trump.
Many top Democrats have urged the US president to consider blanket pardons due to fears that the president-elect will follow through on threats of legal retribution against his critics when he re-takes office in January. Among those speculated to receive clemency are California senator Adam Schiff, California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney – all of whom have been publicly threatened by Trump.
The presidential pardon power has been deployed by presidents beginning with George Washington, who pardoned those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, to Trump, who pardoned his political allies.
Earlier this month, Biden pardoned 39 Americans and commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people. Those pardons, touted by the White House as the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day, followed Biden’s move to issue a sweeping pardon to his son, Hunter, for any federal crimes committed over a 10-year period beginning in 2014.
Biden’s pardons have brought renewed focus on the expansive power the US constitution gives the president.
Trump asks US supreme court to stop Friday sentencing in hush money case
Attorneys for Donald Trump this morning appealed to the US supreme court to pause proceedings in the president-elect’s prosecution on business fraud charges in New York, ahead of his sentencing scheduled for Friday, Reuters reports.
Two previous appeals to stop the sentencing have failed, and now the president-elect’s attorneys are petitioning the nation’s highest court, where conservative justices, three of whom Trump appointed, hold a six-seat supermajority. Trump’s attorneys want the case put on pause while a separate appeal they have filed, which cites the court’s decision last year in a separate Trump-related case that grants presidents immunity for official acts, plays out.
Juan Merchan, the New York judge presiding over the case, has signaled that he will not sentence Trump to jail after being convicted of 34 felony charges related to concealing a payment to an adult film actor made ahead of his 2016 election victory. Here’s more:
Biden says he may preemptively pardon Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, after Trump’s threats of revenge
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden is in his final days in office, and still has a few pieces of unfinished business to deal with before he hands power to Donald Trump on 20 January. One of them is deciding whether to issue preemptive pardons to political enemies of the incoming president, such as former congresswoman Liz Cheney or Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded the fight against Covid-19 in Trump’s first term. In an interview with USA Today published today – a rare, final sit-down interview by a president who spent much of his term avoiding the press – Biden confirmed he may still opt to protect Trump’s enemies from prosecution, and signaled he would decide based on who the president-elect appoints to top roles in his administration.
Meanwhile, Trump is scrambling to halt the sentencing in his criminal business fraud case that is scheduled to take place in a Manhattan court on Friday. Reuters reports that his attorneys have asked the US supreme court to intervene to pause the proceedings, though the New York judge presiding over the case has signaled he is unlikely to sentence the president-elect to jail time. We will let you if the nation’s highest court responds.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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Trump will this evening trek to Capitol Hill for a strategy meeting with the Republican senators tasked with enacting his administration’s priorities, ranging from mass deportations to extending tax cuts enacted during his first term.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing Georgia congresswoman, says she will introduce legislation to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump proposed at a rambling press conference yesterday.
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Los Angeles continues to be battered by three separate wildfires fueled by high winds. Follow our live blog as more than 1,400 firefighters attempts to contain the flames.
