‘Meaningless bulls**t’: Trump slammed from left and right over Susan B Anthony pardon

Donald Trump’s pardon of Susan B Anthony was likely intended as an easy crowd-pleasing gesture. Yet some Conservatives called for a more meaningful pardon than a dead suffragette, while certain liberals called her a “racist.”

Trump issued the “full and complete” pardon on Tuesday, in honor of the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Anthony was charged and convicted by an all-male jury of illegally voting in the 1872 federal election “without having a lawful right to vote… being then and there a person of the female sex.”

One night earlier, Trump had teased a surprise pardon, but his announcement that it would be Anthony fell flat with some of his supporters. Journalist Cassandra Fairbanks described the move as “meaningless bulls**t some idiot feminist in the campaign must have suggested to him.”

“It’s pointless virtue signaling when there are tons of people he could pardon that would actually matter,” Fairbanks added, pointing to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht as worthier recipients of a pardon. 

The move was celebrated by a number of commentators on both sides, but some liberals attacked Trump for pardoning a woman who was famously proud of her arrest, and who would likely have refused the gesture from a man.

Speaking from the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, New York's Lieutenant Governor, Kathy Hochul, demanded Trump rescind the pardon, claiming it treats Anthony “like a criminal.”

Others, led by the New York Times, argued that Anthony is in fact an “increasingly divisive figure.” In her lifetime, Anthony supposedly opposed abortion, and her fame is said to have sidelined the struggle of black suffragettes, particularly after she opposed the 15th Amendment on the grounds that it granted votes to black men but not white or black women. 

The pardon was also interpreted by some as a way of winning over female voters, and of distracting from the ongoing Democratic National Convention, during which Joe Biden will soon be officially confirmed as the party’s candidate heading into this November’s election. 

As well as the obvious candidates of Snowden and Assange, rumors circulated on Monday that Trump was preparing to pardon Joe Exotic – the flamboyant zoo owner and star of Netflix’s ‘Tiger King’ documentary series, currently serving prison time in Oklahoma for animal abuse and conspiracy to commit murder.  

Supporters of Snowden are still holding out hope, however, as Trump did say on Sunday that he would “start looking at” the possibility of pardoning him.

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