What did Donald Trump do today?

He pardoned two turkeys and, as it turns out, an unknown number of real human criminals.

Today, Trump took part in the White House tradition, "pardoning" two turkeys from the upcoming Thanksgiving feast. He used the occasion to make jokes at the expense of people like Gov. J.B. Pritzker he regards as political threats, but also victims of human rights abuses and the refugees he illegally deported to a notorious torture prison in El Salvador. 

Bizarrely, but not entirely unexpectedly, he also took a swing at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Standing in what used to be the Rose Garden, which the former First Lady designed, he insisted that attendees would be standing in mud if he hadn't paved it over (and if he'd chosen to hold an outdoor event in the rain in a literal garden). 

"Joking" aside, there was other news on the pardon front today. As a rule, Trump has issued pardons to three kinds of people: those who can pay him for it, those who have committed the exact crimes he himself is known or suspected to have committed, and those whose crimes were done on his behalf. Earlier this month, Trump issued what was supposed to be a mostly ceremonial pardon for people in that last category: the loyalists who presented themselves—falsely—as the legitimate electors from states Trump claimed to have won. 

But the language of the pardon now appears to be so broad that it may cover everyone who committed any crime related to elections in 2020—and the first criminal defendant in such a case is using it in court. That defendant, Matthew Laiss, voted for Trump twice in two different states. (He was caught because, contrary to Trump's wild claims about mail-in voting, it is very easy to determine when someone votes twice in two different jurisdictions.)

In other words, in pardoning members of his inner circle who committed a very specific kind of crime in an attempt to keep Trump in power in spite of having lost the election—a kind of "voter fraud" he strongly approves of—he may have also unintentionally pardoned an unknown number of other people who committed the rare but more garden-variety form of illegal voting. That kind of voter fraud is extremely rare, accounting for less than one vote in a million, according to one study, but Trump routinely tries to get people to believe that the 2020 election he lost involved millions of such illegal ballots.

This is the second time this month alone that Trump has gotten confused over what he was doing with pardons. That may explain why he has been trying to claim that it was his predecessor, President Joe Biden, who didn't know what pardons he was signing. 

Why does this matter?

• Needing to believe that other people have the cognitive issues you yourself are struggling with is called projection, and it's not a sign of good mental health. 

• This isn't the sort of thing that would ever happen in a competently run administration. 

• Giving your supporters a license to commit crimes is what dictators do.