Good Decision. Bad Decision.

Donald Trump kept his promise and pardoned the pro-life activists thrown in prison by Joe Biden. This is good. It comes on the eve of the March for Life, which announced Vice President Vance would be speaking.

The pro-life activists were prosecuted under the direction of Kristen Clarke, the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. You probably do not know because reporters were deeply uncurious about it, but Clarke lied during her confirmation hearing. Senators asked her if she had ever been arrested for a violent crime. She said no. In fact, she had been arrested for stabbing her then-husband.

Just for perspective, the American press corps is running hard at Pete Hegseth for accusations of abuse against his ex-wife, who herself denies those allegations. The same reporters who are focused on Hegseth despite his ex-wife’s denial refused to cover Kristin Clarke lying to the Senate about her arrest. Clarke then went on to arrest, try, and oversee the conviction of almost two dozen Christians who prayed at an abortion clinic.

Again, the Doctrine of Hell gives me comfort.

The pardons by Trump were a good decision.

The bad decision is Trump’s wounded ego guiding him to withdraw security for Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. Pompeo served as Secretary of State after a stint in the intel community, and Bolton served as National Security Advisor.

Together, they helped Donald Trump orchestrate the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian terror chief. Iran now wants both men dead.

First, no President has ever withdrawn government security from a former President’s aides when a foreign government wants to kill the aides, even if the present President disagreed with the former President and his advisors.

Should any Trump appointee, moving forward, take actions that provoke a foreign power to want them dead, Trump has set a precedent for his successor in office to remove federal security protection on a whim, including on the grounds of disloyalty ot dislike.

MAGA supporters support this because Trump ordered it. They are not thinking. They are emoting.

Only wealthy people can do these jobs now because only wealthy people can afford the private security they might need after office. This will end the middle class's ability to advise Presidents and put more of the elite around Them.

Second, if a person of lesser means does get the job, that person will be disincentivized to take risks because they might anger a foreign government that wants them dead.

The other risk is of those who do disagree with the President they serve. Presidents need robust counsel, even from those who push back. Trump is notorious for only wanting yes men, but if everyone says yes and no one challenges the group, you risk the same sort of group think that has infected the left.

This was a very bad idea.

I know ardent Trump supporters will defend the President on this. They’ll defend pretty much anything because they’re thinking emotionally in the here and now and not about the future where someone like Stephen Miller needs Secret Service protection or, frankly, even Donald Trump, who is not entitled to protection for life.

Giving and withholding federal protection for public servants who draw the ire of foreign governments based on whether or not those individuals stay in the good graces of a President is a terrible precedent.

Years ago, Clarence Thomas was a black radical on Yale’s campus. Thomas, at Holy Cross, had embraced black separatism and participated in the violent Harvard Square riots. He graduated and went to Yale Law School, where he continued his obsession with black radicalism and Malcolm X. One day, Thomas lost his wallet. A young man of limited means, Thomas was in a world of hurt without his wallet.

A young white Yale student found Thomas’s wallet, tracked him down, and gave it back to him. Thomas was struck that a white man would do that for him. According to Justice Thomas, it was a pivotal moment in his evolution of thought. The young white man who found and returned the wallet was John Bolton.

For that alone, we owe Bolton protection from the Iranians. But we also owe it to him because, regardless of your views on him now, he did the job Trump wanted him to do, and for that, the Iranians want him dead. So we owe it to him for unflinching service to the United States, regardless of how you feel about him now that he and Trump are at odds.