Actually, I support neither major political party. I'm probably closest to a moderate "free markets, free minds" libertarian (note: the small "l" means I'm not in, or aligned with, the national Libertarian Party). I haven't voted for any candidate from either major party for decades. I greatly disapprove of Biden, Harris and Trump equally, along with almost all state and federal politicians of both parties. There are less than a handful of national-level politicians I would trust to dog sit, much less run my country.

Interestingly, I get hate from nearly everyone whose bought into either side of the political mainstream, and not because I dislike their candidate (few serious people would argue even their favored candidate doesn't have significant negatives). No, people can't stand that I don't dislike the other candidate/party more than I dislike their preferred candidate/party. It's bizarre because it seems entirely reasonable to have concluded that all the major party presidential candidates are so flawed, each in their own uniquely terrible ways, that they are beneath any serious comparison of which may be less bad. It's simply beyond reasonable discourse to engage in evaluating whether a dog shit sandwich might taste better or worse than a cat shit sandwich. They are all animal shit sandwiches.

I'm responding because you're objecting to my mild statement about Trump's likelihood of having a principled position regarding Ross' case and thus you may have assumed I favor the other candidate or party. Hardly! This is especially galling because I've had to defend Trump, who I dislike as much as Biden/Harris, against reflexive "Orange Man Bad" attacks - if only to point out, sometimes Trump does things which are good. And the same was true of Biden. Both of them have done good things - even if only in the sense of a broken clock being right twice a day.

To be clear, my observation about Trump not basing many of his political positions on long-held, fundamental principles applies equally to both major parties. Neither party is grounded in principle. In recent decades, both parties have abandoned so many of their own long-held, traditional "left/right" pillar positions judged by how they actual govern when in power, if not in their campaign claims, as to now be mostly incoherent. Neither party can seriously claim they arrive at their current political positions by deriving them from deep, unchanging principles. Once again, I'm not making a partisan judgement for or against either. This is simply a factual statement. Neither party's platform positions or political actions over time are self-consistent enough to be grounded in principle. At most, they try to later market the political calculations they've made for pragmatic, contextual reasons as aligned with some principle - but that's just transparent retconning to pander to their base. This is obviously true because no voter can reliably predict what their own party's (or candidate's) position might be on some enitrely new issue in advance.

In the case of Ross, Trump came very close to granting a pardon at the end of his term in 2020. He ultimately didn't pardon Ross due to the uncharged, untried allegations of Ross hiring an online hitman. Trump pardoned Ross now despite the same things still being true. The reasons Trump cited for the pardon were the excessive prosecution and sentence, but those things were also equally true in 2020. So, while I think it's just that Ross is free after over 11 years in a FedMax prison, that's why I don't believe Trump's reasoning was grounded in principle. And it has zero to do with liking Biden/Democrats more or Trump/Republicans less (because I dislike both equally). If Biden had pardoned Ross it would also not have been for principled reasons.