We are hearing a whole lot of chest thumping from MAGA leadership these days about how America is declaring war on drug dealers. They have deployed Navy destroyers to patrol Venezuela ostensibly to root out the drug gangs that are killing Americans. That post above from JD Vance is a good example of the hysteria they’re ginning up. They’re literally making a case that they have the right to summarily execute anyone they think is a drug trafficker, no need for any proof because the danger is so extreme.
I’ve already written about one of Trump’s favorite despots, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, is now sitting in The Hague awitingtrail fro comes against humanity for doing exactly what Vance is crowing about. So there’s that.
There’s also this:
I asked why most [people at a Bitcoin conference] seemed enthusiastic about Trump. There was his increasing closeness to crypto-enthusiasts like Kennedy; his stated willingness to embrace crypto-friendly policy; and also, notably, his promise to release a now forty-year-old man from prison: Ross Ulbricht.
Ulbricht was pardoned last week, at the close of the second day of Trump’s Presidency, a day after Trump’s pardon of roughly fifteen hundred people involved in the January 6th insurrection. The delay had caused some of Ulbricht’s acolytes to worry. “People were posting in our chat, like, ‘O.K., there’s an hour and a half left of Day One . . . ’ ” Rich Clarke, the bitcoin meetup group’s organizer, who works in real estate, told me. “And a lot of my friends on Facebook were posting things like ‘Hope It Happens.’ ” He went on, “I think it was a shrewd move to pardon Ross sort of all on his own, after Trump did the mass pardons. It kind of gives the gesture more gravitas.”
In 2011, Ulbricht, an Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas, founded Silk Road, an online black market that existed until his arrest, in 2013, for crimes related to drug trafficking, money laundering, and computer hacking. According to authorities, more than a million transactions took place on Silk Road, out of the government’s regulatory reach, generating more than two hundred million dollars in revenue. Drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin made up a huge portion of the site’s sales, from which Ulbricht apparently took millions in commissions. Silk Road “lowered the barriers to drug dealing by enabling drug dealers to reach customers online they could have never met on the street,” a federal prosecutor said in a closing argument. (Prosecutors also presented evidence that Ulbricht was involved in a murders-for-hire plot, but the government admitted that there was no evidence that the alleged targets had been harmed, and charges were not pursued.) In 2015, Ulbricht, who went by the dark-Web sobriquet Dread Pirate Roberts—a reference to a shifting character in “The Princess Bride”—received two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Donald Trump, scourge of drug and sex traffickers, pardoned one of the most notorious drug and sex traffickers in modern history to fulfill his promise to Bitcoin bros in the campaign — and keep them on his side as he makes billions from his own crypto investments as president.
This is what he wrote on Truth Social when he signed the pardon:
“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.”
Hey, he needed the votes and wanted to make some money. What else could he do?
And anyway, it’s not like he’s latino or Black so it’s fine. Carry on.