POV: Post-Inauguration Reflections: Pardons, Politics, and Personal Routines

In this lively episode of Faithful Politics, hosts Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram discuss the whirlwind of events following Donald Trump’s return to the White House, including his controversial use of presidential pardons and the broader implications for American politics. The duo also dives into the complexities of immigration policies, media consumption, and strategies for maintaining mental health amidst political chaos. Along the way, they share personal routines, perspectives on political discourse, and insights on balancing faith and politics in an increasingly polarized world.

Staying Grounded: Ten Rules for Engaging in Politics Without Losing Your Mind: https://faithfulpolitics.substack.com/p/staying-grounded-ten-rules-for-engaging

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I am your political host Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? They're well doing fine, thank you. Hey, and we are, we're going to try to keep up with our regular POV episodes. So there are no guests today. And we wanted to try to start incorporating these POV episodes just to give you all a sense of who we are. You spend most of your time looking at us interviewing people and you probably don't have, you know. a good understanding of our perspectives and whatnot. So Josh and I thought it'd be a good idea for us just to have an episode where it's just Josh and I talking with each other about topics of the day of the week or what have you. So yeah, I hope you tune in. It'll be its own playlist in YouTube. And yeah, I think that's it. Am I missing anything, Josh? No, don't think so, Will. I think you're good to go on that. Yeah, so, yeah, so we are recording this post-election, post-inauguration. Trump has been in the White House for about a week. Yeah, yeah, he's been busy, he's been cashing those MAGA checks. And yeah, it's caused a lot of like, like, don't know, dismay, excitement, happiness. I don't know. What are your first impressions of Trump's first week back? Well, I think that he is trying to get like running as soon as he hits the ground kind of thing. it's been no, he hasn't disappointed in terms of creating controversy and creating, you know, a whole lot of headlines. So it's back to the fun days of the Trump headlines. Well, the days you've been missing. where you would hear headlines and it would be, there'd always be some entertainment that you look at in the news. That is true. You know, I will tell you that this second time around, I think I've become much more nuanced or what's the word I'm looking for? Like, I'm not freaking out about all the Trump stuff. I still probably could be diagnosed with TDS, you know, but I've embraced the derangement. derangement syndrome dude. I, you know, I'm not too upset about folks saying, you know, I've got TDS, but, but yeah, I know a much more tapered approach to this go around because you can really just spin your wheels and react to like every single thing that Trump does. And it will drive you up the wall. like, I have a routine now that at a certain time of the night, I have an iPhone and I, you can set it, you know, how you can set. it from like a work setting or personal setting and whatnot and really encourage everybody to do that, especially for work. You got to have that work-life balance, know, but, you know, there's like a political setting where I won't get any, you know, notifications from Twitter or Facebook or, know, any of the, well, Facebook I'll get, but I won't get it from like Twitter, Blue Sky or any of the other places that Faithful Politics is at and just basically do like a media blackout. right before bed every night. So yeah, that's... like 10 minutes before bed, Or like 30 minutes? 20 minutes after you've been laying there, anxious, dude, and you're like, finally like, okay, I need to turn these notifications off. well, you know what? Here's the weird part, I think. You know, we just had Biden leave the White House. And Biden is like, I don't want to say it's like the most disgraceful administration in my lifetime, but it's up there. Especially with regard to the way that he, you know, he did the piece on Mount pardons. and, just like a bunch of, mean, the things he was saying about Trump on the campaign trail when he was campaigning, and the things that Harris picked up afterwards, we're all true. and if you're going to accuse your opponent of being the future dictator, like you would think you would fight a lot harder. You would have gotten out of the race a lot sooner. and you wouldn't, you know, be doing tea with him like on the day of the inauguration. Like you would, you would basically distance yourself from him because like you think he's a dictator. and I'll just, what, what more gripe about Biden? You know, he campaigned on the fact that Trump was a threat to the, to the country. He said after what happened in Charlottesville, It motivated him to to run for president. You know, the whole DNC establishment was like, fine, it's your time now. But like, you want to know how many trips he's taken in Charlottesville? Like zero, zero. And that was the thing he said he got into the race for. So anyway, come on, man. I wasn't writing. Yeah. so we've had a lot going on though, dude. Let's see, we got executive orders, we got Trump rescinding, which that doesn't seem like a surprise, right? Doesn't every president basically do that? They're like, yeah. But what I would love, dude, to ask you about, because we've kind of texted back and forth, is this presidential pardon. of the J6ers, 1,500 people. so what do know about that? Who are, like, is it, like, the 1,500 people, does it include just a bunch of, like, you know, like a blanket charge that a bunch of people got for going into the Capitol? Is it, super violent criminals? Is it, like, What does it really mean? And even thinking about the precedent, is this different than other presidents have done in the past or is it kind of similar? What do you think? Just thoughts off the cuff. Yeah, I mean, I would say before I can talk about those pardons, I would be doing this show no benefit by at least addressing the pardons that Biden gave before he left. I mean, number one, you know, he pardoned his son. That was like the first one that he pardoned after years of saying I would never pardon, you know, Hunter and... heavily critiqued Trump, know, as Trump provided pardons to like, Rodderstone and Paul Manafort and those cast of characters. You know, and I don't agree with with the major Democrat establishment when they're like, well, what would you do as a father? know, like, like, you know, you already lost like two, you know, of your kids. Like, Are you going to let your other one just sit there in jail? And I get the sympathy argument, but I'm not sympathetic because Biden, he could have avoided all of this by not running. So if he really had his family's idea in mind, he wouldn't have ran. Case closed, no worries. Probably would have been better for the country, who knows. yeah, and then, you know, the day of the inauguration, he pardoned a bunch of his family members, like his brother and his brother's wife, or I forget that there was a list of those he pardoned expanded. Actually, what's funny though is I can't remember if he gave Joe Biden a pardon. That's funny, dude. Yeah, and the reason he did that was because he was like, yeah, I just thought that, you know, this president that I literally had tea with this morning, that's like a presidential inauguration tradition or whatever. yeah, you know, like, no, like he essentially said that he was afraid of you know, persecution from the income administration, which is kind of a farce because his brother, number one, is like he like his pardon for all crimes, like was completely unrelated. Like he actually had like a crime on the books that had to be pardoned, but it had like nothing to do with anything. And then and then finally on the Biden thing, you know, he pardoned the members of the January 6th committee. to include like Mark Milley, Fauci, some others, which seems really dumb, because one, Congress members are protected by the speech and debate clause. So, you know, like if he's got a problem with that, he can talk to the constitution. But, but just doing that just seems like, I don't know, I'm really just bothered by it. So then Trump comes in and. first thing he does is start doing a bunch of pardons. And he said on the campaign trail, yep, know, J6 people are hostages and, you know, they're being treated badly and, and yeah, I'm going to pardon all of them. And, you know, some people are just like, yeah, they'll never, he'll never do that. And even like, you know, Congress members, when asked about it, they're like, well, you know, some have been treated badly, which is true. But he won't pardon the violent, the violent folks. so, you know, he, with a stroke of a pen, he pardons basically everybody. There's about 10 of them that whose sentences he commuted. He didn't give him like a full pardon. So like a full pardon is like the crime never existed. a commutation, there's some, there's some diff, there's a difference, but he clearly identified, a set of people that he thought, should be set aside and unique from, from the others. Those 10 includes folks like the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stuart Rhodes, like Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, and a others. But out of that 1,600, I heard this really great analysis by Andy McCarthy, is, he writes for a national review, to be a lawyer, Southern District of New York. and very, very right-wing, wrote a book about Russian collusion. Anyways, he was unpacking some of these pardons that were given. And I agree with him. He basically said out of the 1,500, 1,600, there's probably 1,000 or less people that just got caught up in the moment. were actually waved on by police, you know, and wrong place, wrong time. But FBI doesn't do misdemeanors. So that's why they're all, you know, basically got felony conviction. So those folks, pardon, sure. Now, yeah, I'm all for it, you know? But there was like a smaller group that was also pardoned. One one guy by the name of Daniel Rodriguez. I'm just reading about his case today. the he he basically like took like a flagpole hit one of the Capitol Police officers. Like like there's there's a photo that you've probably seen where it's like an individual is laying sort of like on the ground. in the middle of the mob and they're just like beating on him. That guy's Michael Fanon. And after they beat him, you know, they tased him in the neck a bunch of times, caused him to have a heart attack. Like in the middle of this thing. And they just did all kinds of other stuff to him until he was able to be rescued. You know, that's just one. You know, there's another person that was pardoned that, you know, was coordinating. a stockpile of guns just right outside DC. So for these folks, what's the message we're sending to them? We're sending the message that, yeah, you can commit crimes on behalf of the president and not worry about there being much penalty. So yeah, man, that's a lot. It is a lot. And just seeing how these kinds of presidential pardons work, I was looking up some of it. And just kind of seeing, Jimmy Carter on his first day issued a blanket pardon to an estimated 200,000 Vietnam War draft evaders. Mm-hmm. He viewed it as an act of national healing after the device of Vietnam War, which is kind of what Trump said, right? It's like, it's an act of national healing. Isn't that kind of the language and the rhetoric that was used? No? was essentially saying these folks have been mistreated and are hostages and all they wanted to do was just show their support for a president that had an election stolen from him. Gotcha. So. I think you said that recently just on like a Sean Hannity interview. Gotcha. Yeah. I don't know where I got that from. It's all right. mean, so you have that, you have, know, Andrew Johnson, 1865, brought amnesty to the Confederate soldiers, which, you know, that's like this huge thing. I'm just kind of trying to think like what kind of things have happened in the past. Gerald Ford, but that's not that big. know, some like Nixon. if a bunch of soldiers got pardoned, you know, I mean, if you think about it in your own heritage, like, where would you be? Where would I be without Andrew Johnson? President Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson, maybe is it Jackson? Let's see here. Why am I seeing Johnson, dude? Yeah, if it's Wikipedia, I'm sure it's 150 % correct. Andrew Johnson, dude, 17th president of the United States, 1865 to 69. His vice president in 1865 succeeded the presidency upon the assassination of President Lincoln. So Johnson, Andrew Johnson, if you can believe it. There you go. This is why we have experts on the show. This is why we have experts, dude. Wikipedia, the internet, the interwebs, dude. Absolutely. And thinking about like, so Barack Obama, dude, can you guess how many people he pardoned from, do you remember? his entire, in his two, his two terms. Yeah, 2009 to 2017. Yeah, probably 100,000. No dude, 1927. Yeah. that's not very many. Hmm. It says, I don't know why it says the largest number of modern history focusing primarily on nonviolent drug offenders. So you have these kinds of things and then Trump, you know, give 238 in this previous one, right? And now he just blew that one out of the water on day one, dude. Well, I mean, it's like the pardon stuff, I think it's more quality than quantity, you know, and even in Biden's pardons, because he, think pardon or commuted the sentences of a bunch of nonviolent drug offenders, like a ton of people. And in so doing, he, He pardoned some person that was like part of this gang that used to torture women, throw like hot water in their hoo-has and just like, I mean, just a real, real bad person. But the reason that person kind of made it to the cracks is because like they didn't follow the normal and customary procedure of like, you know, there is a process, you know, that involves people reviewing, I think it's like the deputy DOJ person. And then they bring those things to the president. So yeah, it's pretty wild. But just to pick your brain since we haven't really talked all week. So have you seen the video of that bishop in DC? I did, I watched it at the prayer breakfast or the prayer, some kind of good. like, it's, it's the, bishop that basically asked Trump to show mercy. Yeah. like was there, yeah. I mean, thought that, I mean, I thought everything that she said when I was listening was, I didn't have any issues with any of it that I was hearing. And then, you know, she just asked him to show mercy, which again, you know, nothing is, you know, I think, I thought it was super. powerful, you know what you're saying, talking about the witness and loving our enemies and it's tough because... You know, yeah, it's a weird thing when you're in a job like the presidency or you're in a job like in this place where you have to make these decisions that are going to cause, you know, they're not simple decisions, although it seems like, you know, someone just making a blanket pardon of all these people seems like that's a fairly... Damn. I don't know. Again, I don't know how easy it is to do that. so like it just feels like there's all these kinds of tensions and contradictions that are next to each other that are put up here. And it's just American, it's American politics. So, I I appreciated what she said. I thought she was bold, you know, to say what she did. I mean, I'm not surprised that Trump... You know, didn't like what she said. you know, anything that, it seems like anything that offers any kind of criticism of his actions is normally met with a lot of, you know, with a lot of resistance and vitriol and all that. So I'm really not surprised by Trump's reactions. And I thought... I was trying to imagine if I was in her situation, what would I do? I had this chance to get up and make this very public statement, prayer, sermon, any of that. What would I say if I felt a lot of deep conviction about something? I thought, I definitely applaud her for... using that platform to take a chance. I didn't think it was really controversial what she said. I did think it was interesting. She kind of conflated two groups, undocumented workers and immigrants. And I don't know, when I was listening to her, she kind of conflated those two groups, which I... undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ? No, no, no. There was a time at which she was talking about, basically she said, most immigrants in this country pay taxes, law-abiding. And again, I'm not arguing with any of that. I'm not saying that what she said isn't true at all. It was interesting because this is about finding people that have entered the country illegally and are here illegally. And that's different to me than immigrants, right? Immigrants is anyone who's come to the country, right, from another country, immigrated from another country. And I would see immigrants as kind of a larger umbrella in undocumented, illegal, people you hear illegally as a subset. of that, and she kind of rolled them together, which again, I'm not saying that undocumented immigrants don't pay tax. I mean, guess they couldn't pay income tax. could pay what? guess, know, sales taxes like anyone else, right? They're buying things. it's going to be, so in that sense, they're going to pay taxes. I noticed, I just noticed a little bit of a slight a slight of hand a little bit, a little bit of ambiguity there where it's like, hey, here's this. It's almost painting like, hey, you Trump hates immigrants. Now, again, I know a lot of people have a lot of different views on that, and I don't really have like a personal view to give on that right now. I've given a lot of my views on you know, on our show. And I think people know I'm like, I'm certainly not a MAGA person. I'm not like, all about Trump and certainly have a lot of my own criticisms, but I do think there's a pretty profound difference between an effort to remove people that have come into the country illegally versus, you know, immigrants at large. within the country and like basing all of your views, not all, that's not, but putting too much of your views on how Trump sees immigrants based on this policy, there's other issues that you could look at, I'm sure, or make a cumulative case, which many people are doing and have followed Trump and heard the things he said and have their reasons for thinking. you know, that he has animosity towards immigrants. But I don't know if this particular case is as much of evidence of that as maybe sometimes it's presented as. I don't know if that makes sense. What do you think about that? Yeah, well, I'm actually kind of surprised, like, your first take of that bishop's message. Because, and mind you, just for those listening or watching, Josh and I haven't texted or talked at all about this particular thing, because I was really curious, because... The response from both political sides have been... have just been ridiculous. I mean, on the right, they're freaking out because, you know, this bishop preached the gospel. You know, and the left is like, you know, having this person on... I think she made like an MSNBC appearance and was on the view or something like that, you know? So, I mean, but that's a whole other thing. Like, you know, so it's like, you know, she's sort of being hailed as whatever, you know, at least some champion of justice, which is ironic because, I mean, she's really just trying to champion like Jesus's justice. And it's... And it would be cool if people saw her message, like, hey, you know what? Maybe I will go try to connect with a church this weekend. There's some hip young churches that just popped up. yeah, so that could be an opportunity. But my personal take on it, while I agree, I think that her message will sound pretty short, kind of boring. But I don't like the execution, like the fact that you're in this cathedral or whatever and you single-handedly point out the president and make those statements. And mind you, I don't know if that's just something she says in all of her sermons to all the presidents. You know, but my guess is probably not. So, so it's almost like if you really wanted for him to get that message and you understand who the person is, you know, this Trump, he doesn't like to be embarrassed. mean, heck, that's the only reason he like ran because like Trump basically was telling everybody that Obama wasn't born in the country. So like he doesn't like being made fun of. So. you know, as a bishop, like you have to have other tools in the tool bag to, you know, get that message to him if you really want that message to get to him. So, because I'm thinking like, like if you're preaching and then all of sudden you're just like, you know, let's talk about sin and, you know. Well, I'd like to talk to you about some sin here that you've been committing. exactly. You know that thing you've been doing that you told me not to tell everybody, but guess what? I'm going to tell everybody. So like, just, mean, like the message, you know, was probably necessary, but the execution of the message, I just had some issues with it. Yeah, mean, I totally hear that. I I remember when she said, Mr. Trump, and I was like, whoa, I literally said that out loud. I mean, yeah, I mean, you normally don't make it a practice as a preacher to point specific individuals out while you're preaching. Like for some kind of call to action. or some kind of implication that, with the implication that he's not merciful, that he's not being merciful. Now again, all of that can be argued. I'm not, but like, so I think she was bold. I agree that the execution was a little bit weird. Certainly, it was very intentional, right? to do that. So it's not like a faux pas or like, shoot, I went off script there. It's like that was very intentional. So I think that she spoke, she didn't do anything wrong. She didn't do anything unethical. She did maybe uncomfortable, maybe, I don't know. She spoke from her heart. But again, I think that whenever we get into these political things, we conflate ideas so much. Again, like, and I just noticed the immigrant undocumented worker thing, right? We just, we, we very, and maybe not, maybe that wasn't intentional, but like when you put these two things together, when, when you take, when you take, It's like a way to try to get a message in, slide it in under in a very subtle way. Wait, are you talking about like when people combine the term undocumented immigrant? Yeah, I'm just saying when she actually did it, like, so she said there are many immigrants in this country that pay taxes that, and so maybe she meant to say undocumented workers or illegal, but that's not what she said. She said immigrants. And so that to me, and again, I don't need to harp on this and the note, but it is something that I noticed and I thought about and I thought, well, I mean, that's not really correct. And that's a little bit. that's a little bit like, it feels like shifting the playing, the field a little bit and saying, yeah, well, Trump, he's attacking like, with the implication, hey, there's plenty of immigrants that are doing great things, which definitely true. And I think we should be very open and wanting to get immigrants into our country. It's... It's part of what's made our country so great in my thinking. But looking at that and then the implication is like, hey, Trump, you don't like immigrants. When it's really, this has been focused on a specific subset of immigrants, those who have come in illegally. And then even, I don't know the ins and outs of this deportation plan. And so how do they find out people? How do they find them? What's the process like? Is everyone treated the same? I don't know. Is he just coming after those who have had criminal records or violent criminals? Is it more? I mean, I think ultimately it's more. Go ahead. was going to say a lot of it is, you know, they just know where they are. I mean, number one, Greg Abbott flew, like, I don't know how many thousands to Chicago. So they know that they're there. They also know, like, that they are being protected in some churches as well. But the Trump administration for all their church state, whatever religious liberty have come out and basically said, you're not safe in churches. We'll go in churches and grab people. Like they'll bust down church walls with like and tear gas the place or they'll like come in like, hey, pastor, we need to get in there. And maybe it is like, I know it's weird, man. It's a weird place to be. It is. mean, and, you know, we're going to have somebody on, hopefully in the next couple of weeks to talk about the birthright citizenship stuff with like, with all the stuff. I mean, number one, like don't get me started on executive orders because I just, think it's a terrible way to run a country. But, you know, Trump signing executive order basically trying to abolished birthright citizenship and it's pretty bold. It'll get challenged and most likely get shot down even in this Supreme Court. There's a bunch that already sued him, right? like, I don't know, over a dozen states already brought suit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's going to be an interesting debate for sure. You know, like, I'm hoping that the Supreme Court will shoot it down because if not, it's going to, yeah, it's really going to change things, which is weird. mean, like, so when you think about birthright citizenship, it is kind of weird in the context of We're one of the only countries that actually has that, you know? if you're born here, you're a citizen? Mm-hmm. So, I mean, it is an interesting, like, question to ponder. I mean, I'm a progressive, so obviously I'm more on the side of, like, if you want to come here, you can come here. You know, like, let's all enjoy. But yeah, it's not very popular on many on the right. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, I want to want to just talk about one one more thing then we can kind of close out but the I Don't know with everything going on In the world and in the country and with politics like what are what are some what are some tips or technique? That you would recommend or that you're doing I already kind of talked a little bit about some of the stuff I'm doing but I'd be curious to see what what routines you have. Yeah, man. Well, I know one thing is that I take a full day off every week, try to do that, you know, and really separate myself from work and separate myself from all the different, which includes, you know, all the different news, you know. And I do think one of the best things that anyone can do for their mental health is to stop listening to the news for at least a little bit to get off like social media, to get off the devices and give yourself a little bit of time to just let your brain rest from being constantly stimulated and warned. Eminent danger, thing happening. Basically every headline is designed to make you want to watch it. or listen or whatever. just like any of these. It's just like any video. We just live in this constant state of everyone trying to get our attention because they want our views, our likes, our subscriptions, which by the way, you should like and subscribe and hit the notification bell. But they want that, right? And it makes sense. We have so much, you need to grab people's attention. that kind of creates an incentive structure where you're going to try to get them, you're going to try to get that amygdala going as quickly as possible because you want to get a response. You want to get someone doing something, whether that's liking, subscribing, giving, watching, reading, whatever. And so what ends up happening is that we're looking at, we're just constantly bombarded. with these things that are setting off our reptile brain or whatever you want to call it, just setting the, danger, danger, danger, Will Robinson. know, there's things happening in Ukraine. There's things happening in Syria. There's things happening all across the world. There's things happening in California. And again, like being connected is beautiful in one sense, but also it's like we're connected, but also deeply disconnected at the same time. It's like this superficial connection. to all this stuff. again, this is the world we live in, so I'm not suggesting to become a hermit or to completely remove yourself. But I do think at some level, man, it's like, hey, your mental health is super important. It has to be guarded. No one else is going to guard it for you. No one else is going to do that. So you have to take responsibility and ownership. And I think that includes having the discipline to turn things off and not watch and not read the next article or whatever it is and to really, yeah, give yourself a break. think that's so insightful because when you're talking, was thinking to myself, the stuff that attracts you about the news is all the same things that you learn in podcast school. I there's no podcast school, but you talk to people and there's a whole... like thing you're supposed to do that the, you know, make the pic like, like the, the YouTube thumbnail, you probably if you're watching us on YouTube, it looks different. Why? Because some smart person told us that, hey, if you want more views, you got to do this. And we're like, yes, we would like more views. So we did that. And the same thing with like words and maximizing them for SEO and you know, making sure you got titles and hashtags, like it's all designed to reach out. But because algorithms really kind of reward, you know, controversy, shows like ours, like don't really make it to the top or make it in your feed. So if you actually like came across our show because it showed up in your feed, good on you, you're probably a good person. Because the stuff you're watching said, hey, here's a good person. Here's some more good stuff. I'll just remind folks that we have a sub stack. And I wrote something. been in my heart for a long time, but it's called Staying Grounded 10 Rules for Engaging in Politics Without Losing Your Mind, which by the way, made it into the Christian Ethics Quarterly Journal. So take that. I know. Look at that. Never not in this lifetime. But I'm just going to read just the 10 rules, and I'll put the link to them to the sub stack in the notes. So number one, don't, wait, yeah, so these are 10 rules to enjoy politics. Number one, don't defend politicians as if they're beyond criticism. Number two, accept that you can't be an expert on everything. Three, don't let the media decide what matters most to you. Four, let go of outrage over hypocrisy. Five, think of political parties as tools, not identities. Six, read source documents when possible. Seven, be open to changing your mind. Eight, seek out different perspectives. Nine, ask who benefits. 10, don't assume you know why someone voted the way they did. So check it out. Yeah, check it out. I'll put it in the show notes. And yeah, and thanks again, everybody, for stopping by and just watching us too. Don't forget we do have a merch store. All of the proceeds from the merch will help fund the show. Most of the artwork is done by myself. yeah, reach out, buy some stuff, help us out, like, subscribe. We should try to change those algorithms, but we're only going to be able do it if we help. So any parting words, Josh? Thank you for watching and listening. Yes. And keep your conversations not up or down, but left. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye.