America’s Great White President Remains Untouchable
It’s good to be the king.
Just in time for Independence Day, the Supreme Court has crowned Donald Trump king of what was once known as America. The Court’s ruling Monday generally states that Trump is immune to prosecution for his “official” acts as president, although almost all his actions were criminal, including the time he served college football players fast food on silver platters. If Trump becomes president again, the American experiment is officially over, because really, look what white people voting has gotten us. Technically, the Supreme Court ruling makes Joe Biden the last actual U.S. president, because no one is naive enough to assume the Court will permit him to execute his political enemies and call it an “official” act. The Court won’t even let the old guy cancel student loans or end Trump’s bad immigration policies. No, this ruling is a specific “build a dictatorship” model kit for Trump.
If Trump won the upcoming election, he was certain to make the federal cases against him disappear. Now, he’s received the OK to pretty much make his political enemies disappear. “The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed the three liberal justices dissents as mere hyperbole that “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today.”
Roberts is infamous for his willful ignorance shrouded in arrogance. Hours before Monday’s ruling, Trump shared a post on social media that accused Liz Cheney of “treason” and suggested she should face a trial at a televised military tribunal. He’s probably not kidding.
Yet, Roberts thinks the Court must finally look out for the little guy, in this case the leader of the (mostly) free world. Trump is the first president who’s been indicted for his multiple crimes in office, but the conservatives worry that future presidents won’t be able to do their jobs with the sword of legal accountability hanging over their heads.
“Like everyone else, the President is subject to prosecution in his unofficial capacity,” Roberts wrote. “But unlike anyone else, the President is a branch of government, and the Constitution vests in him sweeping powers and duties. Accounting for that reality—and ensuring that the President may exercise those powers forcefully, as the Framers anticipated he would—does not place him above the law; it preserves the basic structure of the Constitution from which that law derives.”
Roberts offered some more nonsense:
Virtually every President is criticized for insufficiently enforcing some aspect of federal law (such as drug, gun, immigration, or environmental laws). An enterprising prosecutor in a new administration may assert that a previous President violated that broad statute.
Without immunity, such types of prosecutions of ex-Presidents could quickly become routine. The enfeebling of the Presidency and our Government that would result from such a cycle of factional strife is exactly what the Framers intended to avoid. Ignoring those risks, the dissents are instead content to leave the preservation of our system of separated powers up to the good faith of prosecutors.
Most of the Framers owned slaves, but they weren’t so corrupt as to think that a crawling piece of slime like Trump should lead the nation like a mob boss. The man staged a coup in broad daylight and incited an attack on Congress, a co-equal branch of government. That’s more like the “factional strife” the Framers wanted to avoid.
Most legal analysts assumed the Court would never grant Trump’s absurd immunity claims. They predicted that the conservative majority would just slow-walk the case so Trump could avoid a trial and an obvious guilty verdict before the election. The conservatives wouldn’t go any further than that, because they cared about their legacy and legitimacy. Of course, when you say that out loud, it sounds incredibly naive. No, the Supreme Court is a radical and wholly unaccountable judicial arm of the GOP. The far-right majority likely feels empowered by Democratic leadership’s feeble response to their blatant corruption. Billionaires stuff $100 bills down Clarence Thomas’s speedo. An insurrection flag flew over Samuel Alito’s house. Democratic Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin refused to hold public hearings or subpoena Alito and Thomas. His response Monday was another Droopy Dog special.
The parable of the shiny ball
Dean Obeidallah said Biden must use every tool the court granted to stop Trump. Charlotte Clymer wrote that “Pres. Biden needs to campaign on expanding the Supreme Court.” He won’t. Instead, he said during his remarks on Tuesday that he respects the limits of presidential power. We weren’t worried about him, though.
Biden said it’s up to us “to do what the Court should have been willing to do but will not. The American people have to render judgment about Donald Trump’s behavior.” We did that already, and he attempted a coup. It was the darndest thing. Also, that argument concedes that presidents are above the law that we suckers follow. They can only face true accountability at the ballot box. However, dictators are sometimes popular. Leaving this to the voters can result in a scenario where a president is punished more for raising taxes than executing dissidents.
“Today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what the president can do,” Biden said. “The power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.”
That describes a monarch not an elected president.
“The American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy on Jan. 6 makes him unfit for public office, the highest office in the land. The American people must decide Trump’s embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable.”
This seems an awful big lift for the American people. It’s not ideal if our continued democracy depends on how much a gallon of gas costs on Election Day. Besides, the upcoming election won’t hold Trump accountable for his past crimes. It will only prevent him from committing brand new ones.
“I concur with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent today,” Biden said. “‘In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ So should the American people dissent. I dissent.”
Dissent is not a plan. Liberals have come to idolize fiery dissents while conservatives relish the majority opinions that actually have the force of law. The Supreme Court has actively seized power from the people — even their bodily autonomy — and now they’ve further empowered a madman. The Declaration of Independence was only so many words without the will to fight a tyrant, shedding blood in the process. Democratic leaders so far are only appealing to rules and norms that have been trampled and ignored.
Recall also that Americans publicly “dissented” when the Supreme Court was prepared to overturn Roe, and the Senate’s response was to help shield the Justices from public backlash.
For the past 50 years, Democrats have preserved democracy like it was a shiny ball kept in a locked safe. They valiantly guarded the ball from Republicans, whose tactics grew increasingly more aggressive. Republicans repeatedly tried busting open the safe, but nonetheless democracy mostly remained secure. However, eventually Republicans seized the ball. There was plenty of blame to go around. Too many people wandered away from the safe in 2000, 2004, and 2016. Now, the ball is gone, but Democrats think they can still maintain their defensive position. They should embark on a quest to reclaim the shiny ball, maybe learn a bit about themselves alone the way, but they’d have to become warriors who fight Orcs and other monsters. It’s a significant change, I know, but it’s better than just standing guard by an empty safe.
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The same court that told us not to worry, they will never overturn Roe. Is also telling us not to worry, the immunity powers they just granted the President will never be abused.
You could knock me over with a feather.
I wish all Democrats could speak of this Supreme Court and the Trump threat with the same intensity and vitriol as Republicans speak about being asked to use correct pronouns.