President Trump says he is considering pardoning NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Edward Snowden. Reuters.

President Trumps says he is considering offering NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Reuters. President Trump said in an interview that many people fell he has been treated unfairly and that he would start looking at a pardon. It marks a major shift from Trump's previous position, which was that Snowden was a traitor. Pardoning Snowden has bipartisan support but also bipartisan opposition. The move would also anger the intelligence community.

My Comment:

I hope that President Trump does go through with this. Edward Snowden was a true whistle-blower and was able to expose some truly disturbing things about the NSA. Without him we would have never known that the NSA was basically monitoring all communication online. He also did it in a way that made sure that nobody would get hurt. 

Why did President Trump change his mind? I think when he made his original statements he still had trust in the intelligence community. For obvious reasons now, he no longer does. I think he realized that Snowden was right all the time and that the intelligence community is out of control. After having those same intelligence agencies weaponized against them it makes a lot of sense that President Trump would change his mind. 

It is pretty weird seeing the reactions to this idea. In most things today Democrats and Republicans disagree with each other on everything but in this case both the support and the opposition are bipartisan. There are some very pro-Trump people that hate this idea and some very anti-Trump people that hate it. It's insane to me to see people on the far left actually praising President Trump for once...

I do think it's funny though that I don't think Snowden actually likes President Trump all that much. Though he was a Republican he always struck me as a neocon with a libertarian streak. I'm not sure but I doubt Snowden would have voted for Trump in 2016 if he had the ability to do so. And if he does get a pardon and gets back in time to vote, I'm not sure he will vote for him in 2020. Still, I don't think he has weighed in either way. 

Will it happen though? I think it's possible. I think President Trump realizes that pardoning Snowden will change things at the margin for his reelection campaign. And it might actually give him some actual decent media coverage for once. Plus I do think that Trump probably realizes that it is the right thing to do.