For those of you who are worried that Donald Trump will use his last two days as America’s president to pardon himself, I can almost guarantee you that he won’t.
This will be a counter-intuitive thing for him to do, considering that he has already pardoned dozens of his campaign advisors, most vocal supporters, campaign funders, cronies and criminal executives.
Among them is his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner and several people convicted in the Russia investigation.
There’s an expectation among some that Trump will even preemptively pardon his own children this week, just in case the FBI decides to lay charges against them in coming months.
His pardons are for national crimes only, and not for those committed in individual states.
While the American constitution gives the office of the president unlimited power to grant pardons, it has never been tested whether that privilege extends to the man himself.
Be that as it may, I don’t believe that he will want to do it anyway.
And that’s not due to any sort of moral conviction, respect for the office or the country’s legislative history.
Oh, no! In typical Trump fashion, it’s all got to do with vanity and his insatiable need for publicity; to keep the spotlight firmly shining on himself for as long as possible.
The way I see it, Trump is quietly hoping lawmakers will follow through with threats to prosecute him for inciting the violent mob that stormed the country’s Capitol building.
More such violence at all America’s provincial capital buildings are expected this week, possibly overshadowing Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday.
And therein lies the problem.
I do believe that Trump had seriously considered pardoning himself, but I suspect that he has decided against it as a way of daring his political opponents.
In other words, he wants them to throw the law at him in a protracted court battle.
American politicians must find themselves in quite a bind at the moment.
If they decide not to push for prosecution, then they will be signalling to other would-be dictators that they too could get away with firing up their supporters into staging a coup on their behalf.
On the other hand, should Trump end up in a court battle that could last for years, the ensuing media circus would keep Trump relevant and overshadow Joe Biden in the daily news cycle.
Since all his social media has been taken away from him, he is desperate for a highly visible new platform that is as potent and as free as Twitter.
But keeping him out of the public eye should now be the main aim of reasonable people.
Without a communications platform from which he can regurgitate his divisive propaganda, there’s a chance that he will fade into obscurity.
And without someone to champion and justify their vile prejudice from high office and shield their despicable actions, grassroots racists may consequently also be shamed into silence.
No matter how much the world wants to see Donald Trump get his comeuppance in the dock as Accused Number One, it would just prolong the trivial tribalism that he represents; and that doesn’t make it worth the effort.
The best punishment for a media prostitute like him, is to switch off the limelight and throw away the globe!
Force him to cower in a media blackout corner, slowly losing what’s left of his mind over a total lack of the attention that he so desperately craves.
This will give Biden the room to publicly and visibly repair a lot of what Trump has broken.
Meanwhile, Biden doesn’t have to worry about Trump’s distracting presence at Wednesday’s inauguration.
Trump leaves the White House on an appropriately petty note, by breaking with tradition and not attending the event.
But his supporters don’t have to worry.
His nearby hotel has reportedly quadrupled its prices, so he will still benefit financially.
Which is ultimately the only thing that his presidency was ever about anyway! It has always been about the money.