Reason #5900 and #5901 That Trump Was Elected

A daily double today: First Trump pardons Kristian Saucier, former sailor jailed for submarine pictures

President Trump issued the second pardon of his presidency Friday to former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, who learned the news while driving a garbage truck, the only job he could find with a felony conviction.

Saucier was sentenced to a year in prison during the 2016 campaign for taking pictures inside a nuclear submarine. Trump invoked his case repeatedly on the campaign trail, saying he was “ruined” for doing “nothing” compared to Hillary Clinton.

Still, Trump allowed Saucier to serve his full prison sentence. He was released in September and returned to the Vermont home he shares with his wife Sadie and their two-year-old daughter.

Saucier, now 31, was 22 years old when he took the cellphone photos in 2009. He pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information and his attorneys unsuccessfully requested the "Clinton deal," meaning little if any punishment.

The six photos found on a cellphone Saucier discarded were deemed “confidential,” the lowest level of classification, even though some depicted the vessel’s nuclear reactor. Clinton, by contrast, sent and received highly classified information on a private email server. In pleading guilty, Saucier admitted destroying evidence after being questioned.

Saucier told the Washington Examiner earlier this year that a felony conviction made it hard to find work. He works as a garbage man to support his family. While in prison, the family's cars were repossessed and his home is in foreclosure.

“We’re struggling,” Saucier said in January, describing frequent calls from credit card debt collectors and an electricity bill payment plan. “No one will hire me because I’m a felon ... All the skills I worked so hard for in the military are useless.”

Now Hillary, Huma and the rest of the crowd need to be convicted as well, so he can consider clemency, after serving their full sentences, of course.

US Added 313,000 Jobs In February

Talk about beating expectations. Economists had expected to see another maintenance-plus level of job creation in February at around a net 200,000 jobs added. Instead, the US economy had its best month since 2016, adding 313,000 jobs in the middle of winter. Construction and retail led the way in the massive boost:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 313,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in construction, retail trade, professional and business services, manufacturing, financial activities, and mining. …
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Blacks declined to 6.9 percent in February, while the jobless rates for adult men (3.7 percent), adult women (3.8 percent), teenagers (14.4 percent), Whites (3.7 percent), Asians (2.9 percent), and Hispanics (4.9 percent) showed little change.

The drop in African-American unemployment is worth noting, mainly because the White House has been particularly focused on this as a metric. Donald Trump bragged about a sharp decline in this measure during his State of the Union address in January, only to see it tick back up again. This report shows the lowest level of unemployed blacks by numbers as well as a percentage since 2001 at 558,000. Expect to hear more bragging from the White House over that number.

But, but, but, Stormy Daniels!