President Trump said he would pardon late baseball legend Pete Rose on old tax charges, calling the all-time hits leader “very mistreated” after decades locked out of Cooperstown.

Standing beside UFC CEO Dana White in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Trump told reporters he would give Rose a pardon once a questioner clarified the case involved federal tax charges rather than the gambling scandal that wrecked the star’s standing in the game.

“Oh, he did? I’d give Pete Rose a pardon,” Trump said, then laid out why he believes baseball’s career hits leader got a raw deal for far too long.

Fox News reported the exchange from the White House appearance, where Trump also revisited Rose’s record, the lifetime ban, and the long fight over Hall of Fame recognition.

Rose finished with 4,256 hits, still the Major League Baseball mark, won the 1973 MVP, made 17 All-Star teams, claimed three batting titles, and earned Rookie of the Year and World Series MVP honors. He died last September at 83 from hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, still outside the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Trump says Rose paid for 40 years after a now-legal bet

Trump did not soften the original offense. He said Rose should not have gambled. He also said the punishment never matched the full picture, especially once sports betting became legal across much of the country.

“I think Pete Rose was very mistreated. He had 4,200-and-some-odd hits, way ahead of anyone else. A record that can’t ever be broken. And he was caught gambling, and now it’s legal. But he was gambling on his own team, Dana. He wasn’t gambling against [his team], that’s different,” Trump said.

"He was gambling. He shouldn’t have done it, but he went through 40 years of hell and they should be giving him a pardon. They should be getting him into the [National] Baseball Hall of Fame a long time ago. I spoke to the commissioner about it. He agreed to do it, and then he waited though, and Pete Rose died. So, it didn’t help him too much, but I would give Pete Rose a pardon. I would do that."

That framing tracks earlier Trump statements. In March 2025 he posted on Truth Social that he would be “signing a complete pardon” of Rose. The New York Post carried the fuller post in which Trump said Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning” and “never betted against himself, or the other team.”

White, asked about a Rose pardon while visiting Washington, kept the answer simple and left the politics alone.

"I don’t advise the president on anything ever, but yeah, I think it’s fair. I think it’s fair to pardon Pete Rose. Yes,"

Trump had joked online over the weekend about making White White House press secretary, then said he was “only kidding.” The two still took questions together.

Tax plea, not the bets, is what a presidential pardon can reach

A presidential pardon cannot revise MLB’s internal discipline by itself. What it can address is Rose’s federal criminal record.

In April 1990, Rose pleaded guilty to two felony counts of filing false federal income returns for the 1985 and 1987 tax years. He admitted underreporting more than $300,000 tied to personal appearances, autograph sessions, memorabilia sales, and horseracing and gambling winnings. The Washington Examiner noted Trump’s March plan to pardon Rose posthumously for those convictions and reported Rose served five months in prison on the tax case.

That is the lane a pardon occupies. The separate baseball penalty began in 1989, when the league banned Rose for life over gambling on the game while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. For years the ban also blocked the normal Hall of Fame ballot path used by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Trump has used clemency before to correct what he sees as excess or unfair residue in the justice system, including in the high-profile matter of a convicted fraudster freed after a Trump grant of relief. Rose’s case fits the same pattern: a long-closed file, a famous name, and a president willing to say the old outcome no longer makes sense.

Manfred lifted the ban only after Rose was gone

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred denied Rose reinstatement in 2015, saying Rose had not taken responsibility and did not grasp the damage from betting on the game. Further applications in 2020 and 2022 failed. In 2023, Manfred rejected fresh speculation about a return even as the league expanded sportsbook partnerships.

Just The News underscored the same arc: lifetime ban after Rose admitted betting on games, never against his own club, a rejected 2015 reinstatement bid, and death at 83 still barred from the sport’s highest honor.

In May 2025, Manfred finally removed Rose and several other players from the ineligible list, posthumously. Trump had pressed the point for years, including a 2020 call to get Rose into the Hall. In May remarks, Trump said baseball did “a great disservice” by refusing to respect Rose’s on-field record. Manfred later told owners the president was “one of a number of voices” backing the decision and that he respected the office while weighing other counsel too.

Trump’s account is blunter. He said he spoke with the commissioner, got agreement, then watched the process drag until Rose was dead and the relief could not reach him.

The Cincinnati Reds had already moved sooner on their own terms. In 2016 the club put Rose in its hall of fame and retired his No. 14. Local honor is not Cooperstown. Writers and Hall committees still control induction, and Rose never made it in life.

Record first, process second

Supporters of a pardon start with production that still stands alone. Four thousand two hundred fifty-six hits. Decades of contact hitting. A nickname, Charlie Hustle, that matched how he played.

Critics of Rose will always return to the gambling rule he broke and the trust issues that follow any manager who bets on games. Trump’s answer is not that the rule was imaginary. His answer is that Rose bet his own club to win, lived under the penalty for roughly 40 years, watched legal sportsbooks become normal business, and still died without the plaque his bat earned.

That is also why the tax case matters in practical terms. The lifetime ban was a league punishment. The false-return plea was a federal conviction. A president can wipe the federal stain. He cannot cast a Hall of Fame ballot for the writers. He can keep public pressure on a sport that spent years saying no.

Trump has shown the same willingness to force stalled disputes into the open in other arenas, from a push over a contested Senate ballot fight in Alaska to courtroom clashes where his administration has racked up enforcement wins.

One of those wins came when the Ninth Circuit blocked California’s ICE agent ID rules, another reminder that process arguments collapse when the underlying judgment looks political rather than practical.

Rose’s story sits in that same accountability lane. A rule was broken. A penalty landed. The question Trump keeps asking is whether the penalty, and the institutions that enforced it, ever returned to common sense once the facts were fully known and the culture around betting had changed.

What a pardon would and would not finish

Even a signed pardon would not place a bronze plaque in Cooperstown by itself. It would clear the federal felony from Rose’s record and strengthen the moral case for Hall voters and committees who hid for years behind the ineligible list.

Manfred’s May 2025 move already reopened the door on paper. Rose is no longer banned from baseball’s official rolls. Induction still requires the people who vote to treat the career on the field as the main evidence, not a permanent scarlet letter from 1989.

Trump is not waiting for soft language from the sport. He said he would give the pardon. He said Rose was mistreated. He said the Hall should have acted long ago. White agreed the pardon is fair. The paper trail on the tax plea is not in dispute. The hit record is not in dispute. The decades outside the Hall are not in dispute.

Political noise will follow any clemency decision, including late-night shots such as when Kimmel told Trump to resign after a rough election cycle. None of that changes the baseball file in front of the president.

Pete Rose ground out more hits than any player in major-league history, took a lifetime ban, pleaded to tax felonies, sought reinstatement again and again, and died still waiting on the institutions that judged him. Trump is offering the part of justice a president can still deliver.

A country that now wraps ballparks in sportsbook ads can spare a pardon for the hit king who paid longer than the league wants to admit.