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I don't fear the power of weak men. I never have and I never will. But I want us all on the same page about what we're fighting, because we are not beating these motherfuckers with policy and prayer trump isn't just pardoning criminals. He's building an army out of them. medium.com/@drleocroft/...

Tuesday in Wasilla, Alaska, he brought two freshly forgiven felons onstage at a rally, signed their pardons at the podium, and held one up like a trophy. Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming co-owned a diesel shop called Arm Rippin Toys. Their business was tuning and deleting emissions equipment.

Prosecutors said the shop tampered with emissions systems on at least 37 vehicles and collected about $100,000 doing it. Both men pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act. trump told the crowd they faced ten years in jail "because they fixed an engine."

Czubak got probation and a fine. Fleming got a $66,000 fine, with no prison time listed. Then he handed them the mic, and one of them told the crowd to reelect the Republicans who lobbied for the pardons. That's the whole transaction, out loud, in daylight, with a pen.

It's a pattern. In January the DOJ told prosecutors nationwide to drop defeat-device cases. In July he pardoned eleven people in one day, nine of them emissions cases. The cops got called off first. Then the pardons started.

Same day as those July pardons, Adam Kidan, Jack Abramoff's old business partner, got his. He pleaded guilty to fraud and was ordered to repay $21.7 million. He gave more than $270,000 to trump and his committees in 2024. trump bragged about the polluters. He said nothing about Kidan.

Sociologists call it clientelism. A boss hands out favors and collects obligation, and a person who owes you can't afford to leave you. Owes, owes, owes. Strong people build coalitions with folks who could walk away. Weak men collect the ones who can't.

So how do people who've screamed law and order their whole lives clap for this? Dissonance. trump hands them the rewrite himself. The pardoned were "persecuted," they were "fixing their car," the prosecutions were "weaponization." Make a convict a victim and a pardon looks like justice.

Law and order was never a principle here. It's a weapon with an address on it, aimed at them, never at us. That's not mercy, that's recruitment. Every pardon is a debt, and he collects on all of them.