The nominee, or, whoever comes closest to being nominee, that isn't Trump.
If they say repeatedly (more than once), without contradiction, that they will pardon Trump if they win, this resolves YES.
If they say it once, then when asked they deny it, etc., it will resolve NO. They need to unambiguously pledge to pardon Trump if they win.
Related questions
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/29/haley-pardon-trump-as-president
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said if she is elected president, she would pardon former President Trump if he's convicted of a crime, saying the amnesty would be "in the best interest of the country."
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Haley joins her fellow Republicans Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in signaling support for a possible pardon for Trump.
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What they're saying: "I would pardon Trump," Haley said.
@Gen could you confirm Haley is the current non-Trump frontrunner and (presuming she doesn't lose her place or backtrack on this statement) this will resolve positively?
@AndyMartin Haley is not the current non-Trump frontrunner but it qualifies if she doesn’t backtrack this statement
Desantis beats her barely in the polls, but I’ll wait until it’s obvious who is main contender and what their stance is before this resolves - it might be a while yet and a slow resolution
@Gen thanks for the clarification - that makes sense & sounds good
up to you whether to look at polls vs markets, but it seems worth mentioning that Haley has had 2-3x the odds of Desantis in the betting markets for some time now (13 vs 4.4 on https://electionbettingodds.com/, 9 vs 4 on https://manifold.markets/PC/who-will-be-the-republican-presiden-7bf11c066154, etc)
A similar market about other candidates appeasing/opposing Trump: /ClubmasterTransparent/will-nikki-haley-state-the-2020-ele
@AdamTreat Vivek declared at the debate he would do it, and asked for everyone to also pledge to pardon him
@Gen Right but this question isn’t just a stand in for will Vivek come in second I assume? We are trying to gauge how obsequious the other contenders are too I would think?
@AdamTreat Right. It’s about whether or not the main competitor thinks they can get a win without being a trumple
If trump drops, it’s probably more likely, too. His chosen champion would surely agree to pardon him
@Gen Yeah, it is hard to imagine a trumpie candidate winning the nomination without trump himself dropping out
@SebastianWorms Whoever is his main competition at the end, yeah. If it consolidates to Vivek it will resolve YES. (Provided he doesn’t seriously retract before he spikes)
@Gen The questions really about if it ends up being “trump vs not trump” or “trump vs trump lite”
@Gen By delegate count? By poll? By endorsement? What if “not trump” for whole campaign and then ends up endorsing him? Like Ted Cruz last time?
@AdamTreat Endorsing trump isn’t enough, they have to be seriously campaigning still and say they will pardon him if they win
@AdamTreat Delegate count, polls, etc. Should all be aligned. I highly doubt there will be a 3 way race at the end
However, I’ve given it some thought.
Whoever has the highest peak support (other than trump) will be the one who counts. If someone competes to the end, after everyone else concedes, but desantis was at 30% and dropped out while trump maintained 60%, I would give it to desantis even if he’s not the last one to drop
@JoshuaB Good suggestion! I added [non-Trump] and changed "win" to "are elected", thanks
@AndrewHartman Could also be off putting for some, to see someone totally reject the Justice system just to appease Trump's supporters. I really think it could go either way.
Nixon was pardoned, equally undeservingly, but somehow Trump seems far less capable of issuing an apologetic statement and "moving on". He's going to be crying until the end of time about how unfair this is/was, imprisoned or not.
@Gen The thing is, quite a few republicans, even moderate ones who think he's not a particularly good person, still think he has, in fact, been stitched up unfairly for crass political reasons. Given how assiduously the press has, in general, been searching for the thing to sink him with over the long dark season of his political career, I'm not even sure that they're wrong, though an argument can be made he should still be tried.
But in that environment, I think offering him a pardon is likely to be seen more positively than not by right-leaning folks who aren't necessarily diehard supporters.
@AndrewHartman That's fair enough, I can see merit to selling it as a peacekeeping measure, but aside from that, not so much.
Even if you follow the idea that they were looking for something to pin him on, the truth is, they shouldn't have found anything. Where there is unambiguous evidence of a crime, I don't think you should pardon them on the grounds that, "they were looking really hard for it, so it's not really fair".
@Gen While I somewhat agree with your logic, plenty of presidents have rather breezily violated the letter of the law in the past and skated on by. I wish we'd charged them all too, but since that's not the norm, I think it's fair for people to criticize a specific example of a president being held to a remarkably strict interpretation of the law.
@AndrewHartman Sure, lots of presidents violate the law, but they're usually not bragging about it, or recorded doing it. Especially not once they're no longer President, like Trump has done.
Kinda sounds like, "Trump should get away with it, because others got away with it. I wish they hadn't got away with it, but they did, and now that they have, it's unfair if Trump can't get away with it, too" (ignoring the extent of the alleged crimes that past presidents have gotten away with)