There's plenty about our president that's alarming, but I prefer to focus on those aspects of his incompetence that are merely, or mostly, just humorous--for example, his floating the name Muhammad Ali as someone he's considering for a presidential pardon. After winning the heavyweight championship in 1964, when the Vietnam War was starting to heat up, Ali in 1966 claimed conscientious objector status, and also rather famously declared, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me nigger." His CO application was rejected by the Louisville, Kentucky, draft board, and Ali was eventually convicted of violating Selective Service laws, whereupon he was stripped of his title and had his license to box revoked. In 1971, however, the Supreme Court, in Clay v United States, unanimously overturned the conviction. An interesting history of the case may be read here. Its four year route to the Supremes cost Ali four years of what would have been the prime of his boxing career, when he was in his late 20s.
There are layers to the absurdity of Trump blathering about pardoning Ali. The first layer is that he doesn't need a pardon, since the Supreme Court's verdict reversed his conviction more than 45 years ago. A statement put out by a lawyer for Ali's estate said:
We appreciate President Trump's sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971. There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed.
The second layer of absurdity is that, judging by his vilification of Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who silently kneel during the playing of the anthem, Trump should revile Ali for his comparatively militant protest. But here is Trump, in his own words, explaining why he was considering Ali for an (unneeded) pardon: "He was not very popular then, his memory is very popular now. I'm thinking of [pardoning him] very seriously."
Say, what? The reason Ali "was not very popular then" is the same reason Colin Kaepernick is not very popular now. To say nothing of the fact that the exercise of the pardon power should not depend on the president's estimation of a subject's current popularity. Good grief! We live in a democracy of more than 300 million people and the man who was most recently elected president cannot open his mouth without beclowning himself.
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