We’ve also seen it throughout his presidency, as he demands cruel, brutal treatment of migrants. When Customs and Border Protection agents used tear gas against asylum seekers near Tijuana, Mexico, Trump defended them: “Here’s the bottom line: Nobody’s coming into our country unless they come legally.” Pardoning accused war criminals is, in a sense, just more of the same.

If Trump goes through with these Memorial Day pardons, it wouldn’t be the first time he has used his pardon power to affirm the virtue of racialized brutality. Recall how in 2017 he pardoned Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff convicted of contempt of court for refusing to end his racial profiling of the state’s Latino residents. In addition to his racist, anti-immigrant practices, Arpaio was notorious for his dehumanizing treatment of prisoners in his care. He operated an open-air jail where inmates were exposed to the elements (including scorching Arizona summers) and fed meager meals. All of this clearly impressed Trump, who praised Arpaio as “an outstanding sheriff” and a “great American patriot.”

Trump wants law enforcement to act that way — he has encouraged the police to assault suspects (“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don’t be too nice’”) — and so he pardoned a cruel sheriff. He wants soldiers to behave brutally, so he plans to pardon men accused of war crimes. Just last month, he complained that “ our military, don’t forget, can’t act like a military would act” when facing asylum seekers.

Trump wants to dominate the targets of his hatred with arbitrary violence. With these pardons, he has made a promise to those who might engage in the violence he admires: If you do these things, I will protect you.

There’s a reason the president has nearly unlimited power to pardon. “The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in the favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74. The pardon power was meant to correct wrongs, to forgive offenders and show mercy, to promote virtue and affirm the best values of our society. But in Trump’s hands it has become, like so much of our constitutional system, a tool for vice.

It’s yet another way he can realize the harsh vision of his campaign — another way he can fulfill his promise to target the disfavored and disdained with the power of the state.