Trump Reportedly Has No Plans To Prosecute Clinton

In a revealing interview with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Nov. 21, former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway reported that Donald Trump has no plans to prosecute Hillary Clinton, thus breaking one of his primary campaign promises to appoint a special prosecutor and send his rival to jail over her alleged email-related crimes.

Even if it's not upsetting to Trump supporters, it should actually be pretty upsetting for those who did not back the president-elect. Trump pretty much stole the election by saying whatever he wanted about Clinton and trusting in the fact that nobody would look too hard at his claims. If they had read the 249-page FBI report that vindication Clinton, as few journalists and even fewer average citizens did, they would have seen that Clinton's only crime was not knowing very much about computers, which is perfectly understandable since she and her team are politicians, not data scientists.

"I think when the President-elect, who's also the head of your party, tells you before he's even inaugurated that he doesn't wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content," Conway said on Morning Joe. "I think he's thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the President of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them."

This isn't 100 percent surprising, nor does it seem to be of much concern to many of Trump's supporters. Trump said shortly after the election that he had spoken with Clinton and that there was no mention of appointing a special prosecutor. Plus, his base maybe didn't even think he was actually telling the truth in the first place — many of his supporters took his claims "seriously but not literally," a seemingly paradoxical sentiment that makes it unclear what in Trump's campaign rhetoric they perceived to be actionable in the future.

The fact that many Trump supporters seem to be totally OK with this and to have never believed it in the first place is infuriating, because Clinton's alleged criminality was one of the most common arguments against her. If she's not a criminal nor going to be prosecuted, what's the excuse now? Trump made Clinton a scapegoat, got people to hate her for no reason, and distracted everyone from talking about the real substantive issues. Now the United States is stuck with a president who has little substantive policy, an increasingly prejudiced and discriminatory team behind him, and more campaign promises that seem destined to be broken.