Where Does Pete Rose Belong, Rwanda, Libya Or The Baseball Hall Of Fame? How About Trump And Rubio?

"Beware Of Darkness" by Jason Fox

As the U.S. goes forward with a plan to send people Trump doesn’t like to Rwanda, as more people start focussing on the overt corruption that has his family’s crypto-wealth increasing by nearly 3 billion dollars and as the cost of autos in the U.S. rise (+ repairs and insurance) and auto factories shut down, Trump seems to have chalked up a big win in his demented MAGA universe: crooked baseball player Pete Rose may be headed for the Hall of Fame. And all it took was a little typical Trumpist arm-twisting, this time of Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred.

All of that happened before Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, injected himself into the conversation. In his message about Rose on Truth Social from earlier this year, which was posted before news of the family’s petition for reinstatement had become public, Trump promised a “complete pardon” for Rose. 

Rose served five months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1990. The matter hasn’t been addressed since. 

“Over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning,” Trump wrote. 

In addition to speaking with Trump about Rose, Manfred also expressed concerns over how the administration’s immigration policies could affect players from Cuba, Venezuela and other countries. MLB enjoys a federal antitrust exemption that is unique in American sports. Eliminating it would require an act of Congress. 

Manfred previously rejected a different petition for reinstatement from Rose in 2015. MLB’s Rule 21, which is posted in every MLB clubhouse, says that anyone who bets on his own games “shall be declared permanently ineligible.”

Even if he is taken off the ineligible list, Rose wouldn’t immediately go into the Hall of Fame. His case would have to be taken up by a 16-member committee of Hall of Famers, baseball executives and veteran media members that evaluates players who made their greatest impact before 1980. Rose compiled 3,372 of his record 4,256 hits during that era and claimed his lone MVP award for the Reds in 1973. He also led Cincinnati to World Series championships in 1975 and 1976.

In his message about Rose on Truth Social from earlier this year, which was posted before news of the family’s petition for reinstatement had become public, Trump promised a “long overdue correction of a historic wrong.” The post read more like a defense of himself than of Rose— full of aggrieved self-pity, conspiratorial innuendo, and barely veiled threats. Trump has long seen Rose not as a disgraced figure, but as a fellow martyr of “the system”— a system he insists is rigged against white men who cheat but refuse to apologize.

Like Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and every other felon in his orbit, Trump views Rose as a kindred spirit— another rich guy who broke the rules, got caught, and decided the real crime was getting held accountable. That’s always been Trump’s tell: his instinctive loyalty to white-collar crooks and authoritarian strongmen, so long as they never show remorse. Rose bet on baseball games while playing in them— one of the few unforgivable sins in the sport— but Trump frames it as a crime of passion, a “mistake,” not unlike, say, trying to overturn an election. For Trump, it's all about the spectacle of defiance. Remorse is weakness. Accountability is for suckers. And reinstating Rose isn’t about baseball— it's about rewriting the narrative so that no one like him, or like Trump himself, ever has to say, “I was wrong.”

People like Rose and Trump will never have to worry about being part of a deal brokered by Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, crooked businessman Massad Boulos, that leaves them in a concentration camp in a backward, inaccessible corner of Africa. And if Rwanda doesn’t work out… there’s always Libya, not just for criminals but even, illegally, for asylum seekers! Marco Rubio, whose grandpa was an undocumented refugee, said “I say this unapologetically, we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries. We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries— will you do that as a favor to us?’ And the further away from America, the better, so they can’t come back across the border.” That could have fit Rubio’s grandfather to a T.