Editor’s Note: What would the sharpest critics of the past make of today’s political theater? To find out, we used artificial intelligence to imagine how historical commentators would review current events. The following is an AI-generated commentary on the presidential pardon economy, written in the plainspoken, rope-twirling wit of Will Rogers.
Well, Sir, I See We’re Sellin’ Pardons Now
A commentary in the manner of Will Rogers
(A stylistic pastiche — not a historical document. Rogers died in 1935; this imagines the column he might have filed in 2026.)
Folks, I’ve been readin’ the papers, which is a habit I never could break myself of even though it’s bad for the blood pressure, and I see where a rap singer named Boosie Badazz paid two fellas $600,000 for a Presidential pardon, and the pardon never showed up. Now that right there is the first honest thing I’ve heard about Washington all year — at least somebody finally put a price tag on it. Up till now they always tried to tell us clemency was free. Turns out it just wasn’t advertised right.
These two boys who took the money, Burkman and Wohl, told Boosie they had a signed pardon in hand. The White House says they never heard of either one of ’em. Now I don’t know which one of these parties is lyin’, but I do know this — in my day if you sold a man somethin’ you didn’t have, they called that a con man and sent him to the penitentiary. Nowadays they call him a “clemency consultant” and he gets to keep the six hundred thousand while it’s argued out in arbitration. We have come a long way, and I ain’t sure it was the right direction.
A lady reporter named Jasmine Wright went on the radio and said the going rate for one of these pardons, if you hire the right lawyer, can run you up to five million dollars. Five million! I knew a man once who robbed a train for less than that and got twenty years for it. Looks like the smart criminals these days don’t rob the train — they just buy the man who can pardon the fella that did.
They got a gentleman named Ed Martin who’s supposed to be runnin’ the official Pardon Office, only from what I read he’s been moved out of the main buildin’ and given a desk somewhere out of the way, on account of he got caught up in some other mess about leakin’ grand jury secrets. So the fella whose whole job is pardons has himself been unofficially pardoned right out of any real authority. That’s about the most efficient bit of government I’ve seen in years — they solved two problems with one man.
Now the part that ain’t funny a-tall is this: they pardoned near about sixteen hundred folks who stormed the Capitol, all in one signature, first day of the job, like he was openin’ a supermarket. And come to find out, near a hundred of them boys have already been arrested again for brand-new crimes, and a dozen of ’em for things so low-down even the New York Times, which generally writes like it’s afraid to raise its voice, come right out and called ’em “serious recidivists.” One of ’em’s doing life now for child molestation. So somewhere out there is a man walkin’ around today, free as a bird from the charge he actually committed, on account of the President’s mercy — and he used that freedom to go commit somethin’ worse.
I always said I never met a man I didn’t like, and I’ve tried to live up to that, but I’ll tell you, this pardon business is testin’ the policy. Used to be a man had to serve his time, show he was sorry, and wait his turn, same as waitin’ in line at the feed store. Now it appears the line has a side door, and the side door’s got a price on it, and the regular door is just there for folks too poor to know there was a side door at all.
They keep tellin’ us this country runs on laws, not on men. Well, from where I’m sittin’, it’s lookin’ like it runs on men who can afford the right lawyer to explain the laws don’t apply to ’em. I ain’t sayin’ it’s new — I expect they were sellin’ pardons back when Washington still had dirt roads — I’m just sayin’ it’s the first time I ever seen ’em put it in writin’ with a refund clause. That’s progress, I reckon. Just not the kind anybody oughta be proud of.
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