Phillips suggests Hochul pardon Trump 'for the good of the country'

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) pressed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to pardon former President Trump following his recent conviction in his hush money trial.

“Donald Trump is a serial liar, cheater, and philanderer, a six-time declarer of corporate bankruptcy, an instigator of insurrection, and a convicted felon who thrives on portraying himself as a victim,” Phillips said in a post on social platform X Friday. “@GovKathyHochul should pardon him for the good of the country.”

Trump became the first former U.S. president to have the status of being a convicted felon on Thursday, following a jury finding him guilty on all counts of falsifying business records to hide alleged affairs amid his 2016 campaign.

Shortly after the jury read the verdict, Trump railed against the hush money trial, calling it “rigged” and “disgraceful.”

“You think pardoning is stupid?” Phillips, also a former presidential candidate, said in a Saturday post on X. “Making him a martyr over a payment to a porn star is stupid. (Election charges are entirely different.) It’s energizing his base, generating record sums of campaign cash, and will likely result in an electoral boost.”

Trump’s son, Eric Trump, boasted about fundraising numbers for this father’s campaign following the former president’s conviction in the case Friday.

“What’s really amazing, go back to 2016 for a second, the largest fundraising haul in history to that point, we did in one day, you know, $16 million,” Eric Trump said to Fox News’s Jesse Watters.

“And as of a couple of minutes ago, we just announced $52.8 million in 24 hours and we’re probably another five, six million dollars above that, based on the fact that that was exactly 24 hours from the indictment time, which was about 5:30 [p.m.],” Trump continued.

The Hill has reached out to Phillips' office.