A promise about an irrelevant thing is similarly irrelevant. This isn’t pushing the bounds for presidential pardons or going to influence the future of politics or law enforcement at all. The media is deeply concerned about a trivial act that’s both 100x less serious than the lies and pardons of his predecessor, those of past Democratic presidents, and his own prior deceptions and actions. It’s centrist media clutching pearls for the precious “norms” and “optics” while everyone knows Trump has and will do worse in this very same department and that Biden himself has grave failures they’re completely uninterested in. They want to pretend they’re hard-nosed watchdogs of Both Sides without actually engaging in any truth-seeking that might upset people who will still hold power past January.