There have been 45 presidents in the history of the United States of America,the 45th being one of the most controversial presidents that has ever taken up the mantle. Donald J. Trump has a reputation of being an offender and a sexist. Recently,the case of the Russian interference with the 2016 elections has been reopened and has stacked up yet another burden on the president’ s shoulders. Due to this, Donald Trump is thinking about pardoning himself in order to free himself of all the blame and take off all the burdens that he has taken in these past six months. To really understand why he would want to do this,we need to look at some of the things that he has done throughout his time in the White House.

Before Donald Trump was the president of the United States, he hosted a variety of television shows. Out of the many, the most notable one was called “The Apprentice”where people of high education backgrounds faced off against entrepreneurs who only gained a high school diploma.

Through this TV show, we saw Trump’ s personality as being cruel, judgmental, and a person without any consideration of others.

Because of this, people were given a bad reputation of Donald Trump, leaving him with a burden that he could never relieve himself of.

To add on to that, Trump is a man of words and not a man of action. In other words, he tells the people of United States lies. According to the New York Times,“Trump told a public lie on at least 20 of his first 40 days as president.” A president has to be able to lead his people and also gain the trust of each of the citizens that live in the United States, but if one lies in the first days of presidency, it hurts the way people view the president, thus putting more burden on the shoulders of the president.

Most importantly, the most controversial topic in Donald Trump’ s presidency so far is the Russian hackings. Before and during the elections, many people did not think that Donald Trump was going to win the votes.

The probability of Trump winning was 15%while Hillary Clinton had 85% chance of winning. The likelihood for Trump winning was very improbable, almost too improbable.

Because of these chances, many people questioned why Trump won and Hillary did not. Knowing Trump, he is a very ambitious character and wants to win no matter what, so it would seem right that he talked to Putin in order to talk about the election and hacking it. Just a week ago, Donald Trump Jr. came out and admitted to have had meetings with a Russian lawyer. This brought the controversy back to life and put,yet again, another weight that Trump has to deal with. Now that we know some things that Trump has done in his presidency, we can go back to him pardoning himself. In the history of America, there has been no president that has pardoned himself, which brings up the question of can he really do it? That question has been circulating for these couple days and the president himself has spoken on the topic. Donald Trump said in his Twitter that the president does have the power to pardon himself.

According to Article II, Section II, Clause I of the Constitution, Donald Trump technically has the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment” .

Constitutionally, it is possible, but the thing is, no one knows how he will do this. There are mixed feelings about this act as some legal experts say it is possible and some say it is not. But the real question that we should all ask is is Trump really being the president we expected him to be? Is Trump doing what a president is called to do which is take the responsibility of the U.S.? And most importantly, is Donald J. Trump abusingh is powers as a president? A man without guilt or blame would not be looking topard on himself, only a man with so many wrongdoings would be looking to take the blame off of himself and using his power to his advantage.

<Timothy Rah / Oxford Academy 10th Grade>