Leave it to Donald Trump to really lean into absolving war criminals. After interfering with military justice in the case of Eddie Gallagher, and issuing pardons to Clint Lorance and Matthew Golsteyn, the president has reportedly been suggesting to allies that he’d all three to become a fixture of his 2020 campaign. “He briefly discussed making it a big deal at the convention,” two sources familiar with his conversations told the outlet, noting that he has also broached bringing the trio to campaign rallies.

Trump last week pardoned both Lorance and Golsteyn. Lorance was serving a 19-year prison sentence for firing on unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, killing two; Golsteyn was charged last year with killing an Afghan bomb maker and burying the remains. Conservatives have rallied around the pair, suggesting they were unfairly punished for decisions made in the heat of battle, while critics, including some military members and veterans, have suggested the pardons are a slap in the face to those who have served honorably and give soldiers carte blanche to commit heinous acts. In perhaps his most contentious intervention in recent days, Trump ousted Navy Secretary Richard Spencer to protect Gallagher, who appeared poised to lose his Trident pin following his conviction this year of posing for a photograph with the corpse of an ISIS detainee he allegedly killed. He’d been acquitted of more serious offenses, including murder, but was still facing repercussions in the SEALs.

That is, until Trump said he was “not pleased with the way [his] trial was handled,” reversed a Navy decision to strip his Trident pin, and directed Defense Secretary Mark Esper to give Spencer his walking papers. Spencer stepped down, but not before making his thoughts on the matter clear. “I no longer share the same understanding with the Commander in Chief who appointed me, in regards to the key principle of good order and discipline,” Spencer wrote in his resignation letter. “I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Trump clearly believes that campaigning with people like Gallagher—whose own ranks accused him of gunning down civilians, threatening to shoot other SEALs if they reported him, and stabbing a detainee to death—will help his reelection prospects. In the case of his base, he might be right; Gallagher, a vocal Trump supporter, has become a hero in the Fox News universe. It’s down to the broader electorate, then, to see through Trump’s attempts to appeal directly to military families and veterans. “I will always protect our great warfighters,” he tweeted Tuesday. “I’ve got your backs!” Of course, this is an area in which the president has been notably inconsistent, from his unhinged attacks on a Gold Star family to his unceasing one-sided feud with the late John McCain to Republicans more recent character assassination campaign against Purple Heart recipient Alexander Vindman, who testified against the president in the House impeachment inquiry.

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