Let’s cut to the chase: President Joe Biden is not going to end his 2024 campaign over a single poor debate performance, any more than Donald Trump did in 2020 after a first-in-the-cycle debate performance that voters conclusively told pollsters was worse than the one yesterday by this sitting president.
President Biden will stay in the race not simply because he’s already the nominee; not simply because there’s no mechanism to force him to exit; not simply because major media’s and politicos’ hyperventilating response to his debate performance yesterday—about 40% of voters appear to think he won the debate, and only 5% said it changed their vote (a sentiment unlikely to survive beyond a day in any case)—fails to take into account that the president had a cold, is a lifelong stutterer, performed much better as the debate went along, told a fraction of the number of lies his rival did, and saw his intermittent “old man” optics repeatedly belied by his conspicuous command of facts, policy, and history (check the transcript of the debate if you doubt this); no, Joe Biden will not step away from the 2024 election cycle because it would hand the presidency, beyond any doubt, to a confirmed rapist, serial sexual assailant, active insurrectionist, convicted felon, pathological liar, malignant narcissistic sociopath, gleeful adulterer, career criminal, unrepentant con man, traitorous would-be U.S. dictator, misogynist, antisemite, racist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe, and budding war criminal.
Why would a Biden exit ensure a Trump victory?
Let us zoom through some reasons:
(1) Nobody now polls, or has ever polled, better against Trump than Biden. Rightly or not, it appears that at present American independents prefer one particular old white man to Donald Trump over any other option available to them. It is true now, and it was true in 2018 when Joe Biden first floated a presidential run and behind the scenes Trump and his team concluded that Biden was the biggest threat to his re-election. Team Trump thought so then—and turned out to be right—and it thinks so still. Why? Because all the polls say so. No poll has anyone else close to Trump, and Republicans are well aware of this.
(2) Biden has beat Trump before. Even if we ignore polls, we cannot ignore results. Joe Biden beat the pants off Trump in the popular vote and Electoral College in 2020, and the results weren’t that close. Biden picked up states Democrats thought they couldn’t get, more than doubled Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin over Trump, and did all this while, well, old. Was he less old in 2020 than today? Yes, of course. But he was still a stutterer who sometimes loses his train of thought, misspeaks, and underperforms in many debates and interviews. Nevertheless, voters decided that they liked him, trusted him, and believed he’d surrounded himself with great advisers. Which he did.
(3) Biden has had—unlike Trump—a successful presidency. Nonpartisan historians now universally rank President Biden in the Top 20 presidents ever. Yes, really; feel free to Google it. They do this because the Biden administration has gotten results, even when and as they have not been widely reported by the media. But the results are there even if you’re not a historian: inflation is easing, the economy is healthy, crime is down, COVID-19 is under control, we’re out of Afghanistan, NATO is stronger than ever, and the Executive Order the president just signed on the border has clearly had a major and immediate effect on reducing border crossings. Unemployment’s low and Biden has avoided any major scandals. Foreign leaders like him and trust him. By comparison, nonpartisan historians universally rank Donald Trump among the worst five presidents in American history due to his rank incompetence, deceit, corruption, and moral depravity. Why would the Democrats trade a Top 20 president for some as-yet unnamed pol who is untested on the national stage and has no POTUS track record?
Heather Cox Richardson brilliantly dissected the U.S. Supreme Court’s shocking decision about Presidential immunity. The Court abandoned the foundational principle of our country that “no one is above the law.” As she points out, even the justices reiterated that principle at their hearings. To read the sources, open the link or subscribe.
She wrote:
Today the United States Supreme Court overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.
It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.
This is a profound change to our fundamental law—an amendment to the Constitution, as historian David Blight noted. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president has ever asserted that he is above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.
But this extraordinary power grab does not mean President Joe Biden can do as he wishes. As legal commentator Asha Rangappa pointed out, the court gave itself the power to determine which actions can be prosecuted and which cannot by making itself the final arbiter of what is “official” and what is not. Thus any action a president takes is subject to review by the Supreme Court, and it is reasonable to assume that this particular court would not give a Democrat the same leeway it would give Trump.
There is no historical or legal precedent for this decision. The Declaration of Independence was a litany of complaints against King George III designed to explain why the colonists were declaring themselves free of kings; the Constitution did not provide immunity for the president, although it did for members of Congress in certain conditions, and it provided for the removal of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors”—what would those be if a president is immune from prosecution for his official acts? The framers worried about politicians’ overreach and carefully provided for oversight of leaders; the Supreme Court today smashed through that key guardrail.
Presidential immunity is a brand new doctrine. In February 2021, explaining away his vote to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had also protected Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2019, said: “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
But it was not just McConnell who thought that way. At his confirmation hearing in 2005, now–Chief Justice John Roberts said: “I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.”
In his 2006 confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito said: “There is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.”
And in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate: “No one’s above the law in the United States, that’s a foundational principle…. We’re all equal before the law…. The foundation of our Constitution was that…the presidency would not be a monarchy…. [T]he president is not above the law, no one is above the law.”
Now they have changed that foundational principle for a man who, according to White House officials during his term, called for the execution of people who upset him and who has vowed to exact vengeance on those he now thinks have wronged him. Over the past weekend, Trump shared an image on social media saying that former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who sat on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, was guilty of treason and calling for “televised military tribunals” to try her.
Today, observers illustrated what Trump’s newly declared immunity could mean. Political scientist Norm Ornstein pointed out that Trump could “order his handpicked FBI Director to arrest and jail his political opponents. He can order the IRS to put liens on the property of media companies who criticize him and jail reporters and editors.” Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that a president with such broad immunity could order the assassination of Supreme Court justices, and retired military leader Mark Hertling wrote that he was “trying to figure out how a commander can refuse an illegal order from someone who is issuing it as an official act.”
Asha Rangappa wrote: “According to the Court, a President could literally provide the leader of a hostile adversary with intelligence needed to win a conflict in which we are involved, or even attack or invade the U.S., and not be prosecuted for treason, because negotiating with heads of state is an exclusive Art. II function. In case you were wondering.” Trump is currently under indictment for retaining classified documents. “The Court has handed Trump, if he wins this November, carte blanche to be a ‘dictator on day one,’ and the ability to use every lever of official power at his disposal for his personal ends without any recourse,” Rangappa wrote. “This election is now a clear-cut decision between democracy and autocracy. Vote accordingly.”
Trump’s lawyers are already challenging Trump’s conviction in the election interference case in which a jury found him guilty on 34 counts. Over Trump’s name on social media, a post said the decision was “BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE, AND CLEARS THE STENCH FROM THE BIDEN TRIALS AND HOAXES, ALL OF THEM, THAT HAVE BEEN USED AS AN UNFAIR ATTACK ON CROOKED JOE BIDEN’S POLITICAL OPPONENT, ME. MANY OF THESE FAKE CASES WILL NOW DISAPPEAR, OR WITHER INTO OBSCURITY. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife was deeply involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, also took a shot at the appointment of special counsels to investigate such events. Thomas was not the only Justice whose participation in this decision was likely covered by a requirement that he recuse himself: Alito has publicly expressed support for the attempt to keep Trump in office against the will of voters. Trump appointed three of the other justices granting him immunity—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—to the court.
In a dissent in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that because of the majority’s decision, “[t]he relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy,” she wrote, “I dissent.”
Today’s decision destroyed the principle on which this nation was founded, that all people in the United States of America should be equal before the law.
The name of the case is “Donald J. Trump v. United States.”
As a daily reader of The New York Times, I’ve often been baffled by its negative coverage of Biden, coupled with its kid-glove treatment of Trump. For example, the Times constantly harps on Biden’s age, highlighting every verbal gaffe. When the Hur Report was released, containing gratuitous remarks about Biden’s mental acuity, the Times featured it in multiple stories but paid no attention to critiques by retired federal prosecutors about Hur’s highly partisan background. And after the debate between Biden and Trump, the Times editorial board was quick to call on Biden to step down, but not the convicted felon Trump, who lied nonstop throughout the debate. Since the debate, readers of The Times have seen a steady flow of articles urging Biden to step down. Just last night, I counted six concurrent articles about Biden’s infirmity and why he should leave the race.
There’s no question that Biden has slowed down, and his gait is not as vigorous as it was in the past. As everyone agreed, including Biden, his debate performance was awful. Nonetheless, he’s only three years older than Trump, and he has a wealth of experience and knowledge, as well as a well-qualified staff. Why does the Times echo the Republicans’ main talking points?
Contrast their coverage of Trump. Every time he holds a rally, he attacks the integrity of American institutions and hurls personal insults at his opponents. He curses and carries on like a bully. He lies about the 2020 election and leads his followers to believe that elections are routinely “rigged,” unless he wins. He ridicules the judiciary, the civil service, and describes the economy as failing. He says that America is a failing country. No person or institution is spared his insults unless they are on his team. And they don’t have a place on his team unless they agree that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden is an illegitimate president. The Times pays little attention to the anti-democratic, authoritarian tone of his speeches and seldom mentions his unhinged rants, where he goes off topic and speaks nonsense.
I think I found the explanation. It’s contained in this post by media watcher Daniel Froomkin. The editor-in-chief of the Times has made clear that the paper will not take sides. It will not be partisan. Therefore it must treat Trump as a normal candidate—not a wannabe fascist with dangerous plans—and must bend over backwards to criticize Biden.
Froomkin writes:
Joe Kahn, after two years in charge of the New York Times newsroom, has learned nothing.
He had an extraordinary opportunity, upon taking over from Dean Baquet, to right the ship: to recognize that the Times was not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy presented by a second Trump presidency.
But to Kahn, democracy is a partisan issue and he’s not taking sides. He made that clear in an interview with obsequious former employee Ben Smith, now the editor of Semafor.
Kahn accused those of us asking the Times to do better of wanting it to be a house organ of the Democratic party:
To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda.
But critics like me aren’t asking the Times to abandon its independence. We’re asking the Times to recognize that it isn’t living up to its own standards of truth-telling and independence when it obfuscates the stakes of the 2024 election, covers up for Trump’s derangement, and goes out of its way to make Biden look weak.
And to the extent that Kahn has changed anything in the Times newsroom since Baquet left, it’s to double down on a form of objectivity that favors the comfortable-white-male perspective and considers anything else little more than hysteria.
Throwing Baquet under the bus, Kahn called the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests “an extreme moment” during which the Times lost its way.
“I think we’ve learned from it. I think we found our footing after that,” he said.
I translate that to mean that the old guard has reasserted total control over the rabble.
But how, exactly, the Times lost its footing, he doesn’t explain. I’d love to see him point to a few articles that he considers went too far. Best I can tell, his real complaint is that the Times under Baquet hired too many young and diverse people who — in his view — don’t understand the rules.
“I think there’s a larger number of people who we might at some point have hired, but we’ve asked the kind of questions or looked at the sort of work that they do, and wondered whether they’d be a good fit for us,” Kahn said, making it clear he won’t make that mistake again.
His example was hyperbolic and not even vaguely credible:
We’re looking more closely and asking more questions and doing more interviews. … We’ve actually asked people, “What happens if you got an assignment to go and report on some people that have said some nasty things and that you don’t like, what would you do?” And some people say, “I’d reject the assignment.” Okay, well, then you should work somewhere else.
I’d be willing to bet a large sum that no job candidate at the Times has ever said any such thing.
On Democracy
In one small paragraph, Kahn outdid himself. He:
Dismissed the importance of democracy as a political issue.
Disclosed that the Times coverage is poll driven.
Asserted that coverage of the economy and immigration is favorable to Trump.
Whined that more coverage of democracy was tantamount to becoming a partisan publication.
Here’s what he said:
It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them? I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House. We become an instrument of the Biden campaign?
(Smith had asked Kahn to respond to Pfeiffer, a former Obama official, who recently complained that the editors at the Times “do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power.”)
That one paragraph, posted on social media by NYU professor Jay Rosen, elicited a storm of critiques.
Cartoonist Ruben Bolling was among those upset by Kahn’s dismissal of democracy as a key issue.
Hate to Godwin’s Law this, but what if the Berlin Bugle in 1931 said, Hitler may be a threat to democracy, but polls show that most Germans are most concerned about Communism and the Jewish problem. A journalist’s job is not to reflect the polls, but to cover the objectively important stories.
University College London professor Brian Klaas wrote:
It is insane to me that someone in this role doesn’t understand that democracy is the superstructure for literally everything else. Democracy isn’t an issue that matters because of public opinion. It’s *the* issue that makes free public opinion possible.
Just so you know, NYT fully believes they have no obligation to stop the fascist attack on America. They’ve finally said so explicitly. Act accordingly.
Many objected to Kahn’s argument that democracy is a partisan issue. Extremism researcher Mark Pitcavage wrote:
This quote strongly suggests the exec editor of the NYT can’t even think of democracy as an issue other than as a Biden campaign strategy.
This is so, so tiresome. Nobody says it’s his job to “help” Joe Biden. It would be nice if they could find it in their hearts not to sabotage him though.
Others were horrified that Kahn breezily suggested that the economy and immigration were favorable stories for Trump. Journalist and author James Surowiecki wrote:
If the NYT covers it accurately, the economy is not an issue that is “favorable to Trump.”
The Exec. Editor of @nytimes believes immigration, the economy, & inflation are issues “favorable to Trump.”
Just to take immigration, why would a plan for militarized mass deportations & concentration camps be “favorable to Trump?” How’s a STRONG economy “favorable to Trump?
[Please open the link to finish this excellent post.]
The above post was written in May.
More recently, the Times demonstrated Froomkin’s point about its habit of normalizing Trump.
Froomkin retweeted the following example:
@scaredlawyerguy: If Biden so much as flubs a word in a speech, there’s a week of “he’s lost it, too old, step down” argle bargle in the media but Trump? He can rant incoherently for an hour and the media is just like “the hold this guy has on his supporters, it’s INCREDIBLE”
Meisels’s:
Here is a short summary of Donald Trump’s June 9 speech in Las Vegas:
Tells crowd “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”
Tells contractors who set up mic and teleprompter they did a “shitty job” and he “won’t pay them.”
Tells audience to choose “suicide over Biden.”
Complains about teleprompter again.
Asks “Do I get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark?”
Claims he “aced” a dementia test twice: “Not easy to ace!”
Says “There has never been people treated more horrifically than J6 hostages.”
Calls prosecutor a “dumb son of a bitch.”
Complains media is too focused on health of crowd in heat when they should “care about Trump.”
Glitches multiple times.
Speech ends. Trump whisked away on private jet paid for by donors.
Greg Olear writes a terrific blog called PREVAIL about whatever he wants.
He writes about the Supreme Court’s latest decision placing the President above the law, freeing him to commmit crimes with absolute immunity from prosecution. He notes that they ignore history and the clear-cut intentions and writings of the Framers of the Constitution.
He is not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar. He explains in plain language how extreme this decision is by citing the dissenting Justices.
He writes:
A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. —Declaration of Independence
Whatever the MAGA narrative about his alleged crime family, President Biden is as honest as politicians come, and regardless of his newfound kingly powers, he’s not going to recommission Alcatraz and send Trump there, or nationalize Fox News, or deport Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch and Peter Thiel, or sic SEAL Team Six on SCOTUS. The guy won’t even pardon his son—the obvious victim of a humiliating political witch hunt—because he thinks it would be inappropriate. So it’s safe to say he’s not gonna go John Wick on Donald anytime soon. Brandon only runs so dark.
Furthermore, I am neither attorney nor law school graduate nor Supreme Court Kremlinologist. Legal texts bore me. Like, I don’t even like court procedurals. So I’d be lying if I told you I had any idea what the decision augurs for the FPOTUS, the election, or the future of the country. I’m going to defer, instead, to the experts who do know: three sitting Supreme Court Justices.
“The main takeaway of [yesterday]’s decision is that all of a President’s official acts, defined without regard to motive or intent, are entitled to immunity that is ‘at least…presumptive,’ and quite possibly ‘absolute,’” Sonia Sotomayor wrote, in a dissent for the ages. “Whenever the President wields the enormous power of his office, the majority says, the criminal law (at least presumptively) cannot touch him.”
We must presume a POTUS is immune from, basically, any potentially criminal act committed while he was in office. Ah, and who determines what he isn’t immune from? The Supreme Court! Fancy trick, that.
“In sum,” Sotomayor continues, “the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.”
In her own addendum to the dissent, Ketanji Brown Jackson discusses the IRL impact the decision will have:
In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate as speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction. Once selfregulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible. So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future. The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious.
Obvious to anyone who is not a Leonard Leo radical Catholic reactionary weirdo on Harlan Crow’s payroll, that is.
And speaking of Leonard Leo radical Catholic reactionary weirdos, there is an “Easter egg” in the decision! In his concurrence, Clarence Thomas—who violated the law by not recusing from the case, not that Dick Durban gives a shit—shared his unsolicited opinion, clearly directed at the corrupt judge Aileen Cannon, that the Office of the Special Counsel should not exist, constitutionally speaking.
You might want to take your heart medication before reading this excerpt from Thomas’s little addendum, because this is next-level—which is to say, Kremlin-worthy—trolling:
I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States. But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been “established by Law,” as the Constitution requires. Art. II, §2, cl. 2. By requiring that Congress create federal offices “by Law,” the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure. If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.
Wow, someone really doesn’t want that case to go to trial! One can’t help but wonder, reading that oddly specific wording, what Clarence and/or his insurrectionist-adjacent wife might be hiding in regards to January 6th. Does Trump have something on them? Are they trying to protect themselves from eventual prosecution? Are they bona fide True Believers? Or is there something even more insidious happening chezClarence et Ginni?
Thomas may as well have borrowed Trump’s Sharpie and scrawled I AM A TRAITOR—or, better yet, я предател—on the hard copy of the decision. The man is an adenocarcinoma on the prostate of democracy. At this point, we must question, if not fully doubt, Thomas’s allegiance to the United States.
But the true evil genius of Trump v. United States, if you’re fash, is in the shielding of POTUS communications, such that, even if an act is deemed personal and unofficial, most of the available evidence to prove criminality isn’t admissible in court.
“Not content simply to invent an expansive criminal immunity for former Presidents,” Sotomayor explains, “the majority goes a dramatic and unprecedented step further. It says that acts for which the President is immune must be redacted from the narrative of even wholly private crimes committed while in office. They must play no role in proceedings regarding private criminal acts.”
In her dissent, Sotomayor lays out what the majority—which is to say, the aforementioned Leonard Leo radical Catholic reactionary weirdos—decided, why it’s “atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable,” and the malefic impact it will have on our democracy: (Note: I’m removing the references that appear after every other sentence, to make it easier for us non-lawyers to read.)
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent….
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law. The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of “core constitutional powers.” This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and the majority’s attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds. In any event, it is quickly eclipsed by the second move, which is to create expansive immunity for all “official act[s].” Whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless. Finally, the majority declares that evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical.
Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force. Under scrutiny, its arguments crumble. To start, the majority’s broad “official acts” immunity is inconsistent with text, history, and established understandings of the President’s role. Moreover, it is deeply wrong, even on its own functionalist terms. Next, the majority’s “core” immunity is both unnecessary and misguided. Furthermore, the majority’s illogical evidentiary holding is unprecedented. Finally, this majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the Presidency and for our democracy.
What Trump v. United States does, as I am hardly the first to point out, is turn the president into a king. This is ironic, because for all of Alito’s and Thomas’s bluster about “originalism,” where they ask WWJD (where “J” stands for “Jefferson”), the one thing we Americans—even little kids, ffs!—know for sure about the Founders is that they did not want another king. How do we know this? They wrote a whole fucking letter about it and posted it to George III. You can see a copy at the National Archives Museum.
Anyway, said Troll King of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, worked the George III stuff into his reasoning that Jack Smith has no more authority to indict Donald Trump than Jack White, Jack Black, Jack B. Nimble, or Jack B. Quick. “In fact, one of the grievances raised by the American colonists in declaring their independence was that the King ‘ha[d] erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance,’” Thomas writes, no doubt pleased with himself for working “erect” and “eat out” into a concurrence.
“The Founders thus drafted the Constitution with ‘evidently a great inferiority in the power of the President, in this particular, to that of the British king,’” he continues, noting that they “broke from the monarchial model by giving the President the power to fill offices (with the Senate’s approval), but not the power to create offices. They did so by ‘imposing the constitutional requirement that new officer positions be “established by Law” rather than through a King-like custom of the head magistrate unilaterally creating new offices.’”
In short, Clarence Thomas is attempting to eighty-six Jack Smith on the grounds that the Founders explicitly rejected a “monarchial model,” while simultaneously arguing that Trump should be given kingly powers.
These bought-and-paid-for fascists are just fucking with us at this point.
The last six paragraphs of Sotomayor’s dissent are, in a word, chilling. Again, I’ve not read many Supreme Court decisions, but I’d be surprised if this were not the first one that mentioned the possibility of a president tapping SEAL Team Six to whack a political rival.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: this is the senior liberal justice on the Supreme Court freaking the fuck out about what Roberts and his reactionary chums have unleashed. Lines from this section have been quoted in every article published about the decision, but I’m going to include the entire excerpt, for maximum impact:
Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. 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.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were not so single-minded. In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.” The answer after today is no.
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.
With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
Six weeks ago, Sotomayor spoke at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where she was honored with an award. She was remarkably candid about her experience working with six fascists. “There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” she said. “There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”
I wonder if the immunity case was one of the times Sotomayor wept in her office—or if the ugly future it portends was too horrifying for the tears to come.
Jamelle Bouie is an opinion writer for The New York Times. He writes with exceptional insight and clarity. In this column, he explains the radical, unprecedented nature of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. The majority claims to be “originalists,” paying strict attention to the meaning of the words of those who wrote the Constitution, but this decision clearly demonstrates their complete indifference to the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution. The Framers created a strong balance of power among the three branches of the Federal Government; this Court negates those checks and balances.
With this ruling,Trump vs. US, the six member majority of the Supreme Court has shown that they are rank partisans. Their overriding objective was to protect Trump, first, by dragging out their decision as long as possible; second, by remanding the case to a District Court, where it may require months of hearings and appeals to determine which acts are official and which are not; and third, by affirming Trump’s once-absurd claim that the President can do whatever he wants and it’s not illegal.
The Roberts Court is a disgrace.
Jamelle Bouie writes:
In 1977, nearly three years after leaving office in disgrace, President Richard Nixon gave a series of interviews to David Frost, a British journalist. Of their hourslong conversations, only one part would enter history.
“When the president does it,” Nixon told Frost, defending the conduct that ended his presidency, “that means that it is not illegal.” He went on to add that if “the president approves an action because of the national security — or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude — then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law.” Otherwise, Nixon concluded, “they’re in an impossible position.”
Yesterday, in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the Supreme Court affirmed Nixon’s bold assertion of presidential immunity. Ruling on the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for his role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that the president has “absolute immunity” for “official acts” when those acts relate to the core powers of the office.
“We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office,” Roberts writes. “At least with respect to the president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity.”
The majority divides official conduct from “unofficial conduct,” which is still liable for prosecution. But it doesn’t define the scope of “unofficial conduct” and places strict limits on how courts and prosecutors might try to prove the illegality of a president’s unofficial acts. “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the president’s motives,” Roberts writes. “Such an inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose, thereby intruding on the Article II interests that immunity seeks to protest.” In other words, the why of a president’s actions cannot be held as evidence against him, even if they’re plainly illegitimate.
Roberts tries to apply this new, seemingly extra-constitutional standard to the facts of the case against the former president. He says that the president “has ‘exclusive authority and absolute discretion’ to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute, including with respect to allegations of election crime” and may “discuss potential investigations and prosecutions” with Justice Department officials, effectively neutering the idea of independent federal law enforcement. Turning to Trump’s attempt to pressure Mike Pence into delaying certification of the Electoral College, Roberts says that this too was an official act.
Having made this distinction between “official” and “unofficial” conduct, Roberts remands the case back to a Federal District Court so that it can re-examine the facts and decide whether any conduct described in the indictment against Trump is prosecutable.
The upshot of this decision is that it will delay the former president’s trial past the election. And if Trump wins he can quash the case, rendering it moot. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has, in other words, successfully kept the American people from learning in a court of law the truth of Trump’s involvement on Jan. 6.
But more troubling than the court’s interference in the democratic process are the disturbing implications of the majority’s decision, which undermines the foundations of republican government at the same time that it purports to be a strike in defense of the constitutional order.
Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution does not exist in the Constitution, Justice Sonia Sotomayor observes in her dissent. The historical evidence, she writes, “cuts decisively against it.” By definition, the president was bound by law. He was, first and foremost, not a king. He was a servant of the public, and like any other servant, the framers believed he was subject to criminal prosecution if he broke the law.
And while the majority might say here that the president is still subject to criminal prosecution for “unofficial acts,” Sotomayor aptly notes that the chief justice has created a standard that effectively renders nearly every act official if it can be tied in some way, however tenuously, to the president’s core powers.
If the president takes official action whenever he acts in ways that are “not manifestly or palpably beyond his authority” and if “in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the president’s motives,” then, Sotomayor writes, “Under that rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt motives and intent, remains official and immune.”
A president who sells cabinet positions to the highest bidder is immune. A president who directs his I.R.S. to harass and investigate his political rivals is immune. A president who gives his military illegal orders to suppress protesters is immune.
These examples only scratch the surface of allowable conduct under the majority’s decision. “The court,” Sotomayor writes, “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.” When he uses his official powers in any way, she continues, “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.”
The bottom line, Sotomayor concludes, is that “the relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
If the president is a king, then we are subjects, whose lives and livelihoods are only safe insofar as we don’t incur the wrath of the executive. And if we find ourselves outside the light of his favor, then we have find ourselves, in effect, outside the protection of the law.
Roberts says that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution is necessary to preserve the separation of powers and protect the “energy” of the executive. But the aim of the separation of powers was not merely to create exclusive spheres of action for each branch — if this were true, the Senate, which ratifies treaties and confirms executive branch appointments, would not exist in its current form — but to prevent the emergence of unchecked authority. Roberts has reversed this. Now separation of powers requires the absolute power of the executive to act without checks, without balances and without limits.
In their relentless drive to protect a Republican president and secure his power for a future administration, the conservative majority has issued a fundamentally anti-republican opinion. In doing so, it has made a mockery of the American constitutional tradition.
By the end of his time in the White House, Nixon was a disgrace. But to the conservative movement, he was something of a hero — hounded out of office by a merciless liberal establishment. One way to tell the story of the Republican Party after Nixon is as the struggle to build a world in which a future Nixon could act unimpeded by law.
Roberts has done more than score a victory for Trump. He has scored a victory for the conservative legal project of a unitary executive of immense power. Besides Trump, he has vindicated the lawlessness of Republican presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush. The Nixonian theory of presidential power is now enshrined as constitutional law.
This time when the president does it, it really won’t be illegal.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President of the United States has absolute immunity for criminal acts committed in his official capacity. He may order the Department of Justice to prosecute his political opponents. He can organize a coup against the government. He may order the military to assassinate his enemies. He may, as Trump did, send a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol and seek to stop the certification of the man who won the election and to murder elected officials. He may take a bribe for appointments or pardons.
The Court laid the groundwork for authoritarianism. For fascism. It eroded a basic understanding of our democracy. The six reactionary justices obliterated the bedrock principle of our government that “no person is above the law.” Under this ruling, the President is above the law. He is a King. The Founders would be appalled by this decision. Under this ruling, Richard Nixon need not have resigned.
This court is a threat to democracy. The majority is not conservative. It overrules precedent without hesitation, as it did in Dobbs (the abortion decision) and as it does in this decision.
Sabrina Haake is a veteran journalist who writes a blog called “The Haake Take.” This is her take on the debate. Read it and subscribe.
I watched the debate in horror, like millions of moderates. Here was a slick conman with a national bullhorn- sans fact checking- next to a decent man who tells the truth but can’t get his words out.
Even Republicans know Trump’s performance was a firehose of lies, but after the fact fact-checking is just background noise, irrelevant to all but political junkies. (We know who we are.) His base also knows Trump is a serial liar, which they consider a feature, not a bug. Whattaya do with that?
The sad reality is that facts vs. lies and the grave geopolitical risks facing us have now been upstaged by Biden’s pauses, weak voice and halting delivery, all of which seemed to confirm supporters’ fears about his age. Biden’s style, rather than the substance delivered by either man, dominates all the headlines.
Why o why didn’t Biden open with, ‘folks, I have a cold, bear with me, my voice is rough, but we’ll get through it…’? Instead, his voice gravelly and barely audible, he bumbled, even though most facts were on his side.
The whole cringe fest was a Fox News fantasy come to life. I cried for my country, popped an Ambien, and went to bed.
I realize, at this point, pundits are just echoing each other. No one really knows what the fallout will be, or how the undecideds felt about the debate. I have some shred of hope that Americans are smart enough to cut through the slick lies vs. bumbling truth and consider what both men actually said. But honestly, MAGA exists because about 30% of us want a show more than sound governance; violence and retribution are sexier than policy Every. Single. Time.
Also, morons get juiced by hate, which stimulates the brain like an opioid. Hate is the brain’s most powerful motivator- right up there with fear- which means hate-filled people vote in higher numbers than complacent moderates. This, very simply, is why the stupidest 20% of the U.S. has been able to impose minority rule, aligned with the morbidly rich seeking to avoid regulations and taxes. (Darwin suggests we get real serious about real education, real fast.)
A silver lining?
Maybe, since SCOTUS just gutted the administrative state, stripping the federal government of most of its power to fight climate change, we’ll see violence from the left this time. The absurdity of letting morons like Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch substitute their personal, lay opinions for those of trained experts is worse than partisan– it’s suicidal. (Thomas recently shot down the AFT’s expert opinion that bump stocks keep firing the trigger like a machine gun, while Gorsuch confused an air pollutant with nitrous oxide—ie, laughing gas– when gutting protections for the environment.)
Even peaceful leftists will get violent when their lives are threatened. Since the Court has also ruled that it’s ok to storm federal buildings, maybe climate activists will take a clue from the J6 mob. (Not advocating violence, just opining on its likelihood, which I learned from Fox News. Maybe when MAGA idiots clamoring for civil war finally get a taste of blood they’ll retract their claws. But veep candidate JD Vance told us most of them are on crack or drunk, so they’re probably itching for entertainment, what’s a few bodies? I’m just saying their mental vacuums need to be filled with something, and Trump rallies, Fox and stoning their neighbors can only fill so many hours.
The gaslighting got upstaged, but it was masterclass
Biden, far more forceful at a North Carolina rally right after debate, freely admits he stumbled. “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he said, but “I know right from wrong.”
And that’s the thing: what he’s done in office in three and a half years should count far, far more than a bad 90 minute performance. As Vice President Kamala Harris said in her post-debate interview, “I got the point that you’re making about a one and a half hour debate tonight. I’m talking about three and a half years of performance in work that has been historic…”
And she’s right: if this is a contest on the merits, on substance, Biden wins hands down.
When Trump said Hamas attacked Israel and Putin attacked Ukraine because Biden is weak, I worried, because low information voters won’t think it through. No one needs any spin; Putin himself has said his invasion goes back to the 17th century, Peter the Great, and his personal power-lust for restoring the Soviet Empire.
The complexities of the Israel-Hamas war are even deeper. They far exceed Trump’s cranial capacity, going back decades, marginally beginning with Hitler’s atrocities. Israel’s history exceeds most voters’ attention spans, including mine. Biden has walked a tightrope, empathizing with suffering on both Israeli and Palestinian sides. He has forcefully denounced and criticized Netanyahu’s cruelty, and immediately denounced the naked brutality of Hamas. No one alive could do a better job navigating Israel’s scorching complexity.
Suffering Palestinians deserve all the aid, support and compassion they are getting– far more– students on the left are right in that regard. But where they’re wrong is in failing to understand that if Biden cut off support to Israel, Trump would collect billions of dollars in PAC donations overnight and storm back into power, and few people would ever hear or care about Palestinian suffering again.
Trump’s mendacity is unprecedented in US presidential history, and the damage he has caused already will linger for decades. His offenses are too numerous to list, including ending abortion, adding $8 trillion to the deficit, robbing the poor for tax cuts to billionaires, selling the climate to big oil, blah blah blah. It’s redundant already.
Military generals and experts who worked with Trump are warning us
Biden is running for re-election not to stay out of prison or engage in retribution, but to save America from Trump and his army of sycophants addicted to power. They are dangerous. Now is not the time to start over, but to armor up.
During his awful debate performance, Biden managed to reference— albeit far too softly– that in a national survey conducted by the University of Houston and Coastal Carolina University, peer-reviewed academic and social science researchers, along with qualified historians and political scientists rated Trump the worst president in the history of the United States. Ever. According to America’s historians. Don’t trust your own instincts after the debate? Let that sink in.
Not enough? Consider that Trump’s closest military and domestic advisors have warned us how dangerous it would be to return him to power….
I’ll close with Robert DeNiro’s words because I really can’t top them. Here’s what he just wrote in a post-debate email:
Over the years, I’ve played my share of vicious, low-life characters. I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, and the utter banality of their cruelty. Donald Trump is a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics who will do whatever he can to obtain power. As an actor, I could never play him. There’s not a shred of humanity to hang on to. I strongly support Joe Biden. He’s a lifelong public servant with great personal integrity. I trust him completely to run the country. He puts you first. Trump cares only about himself.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
Many pundits and editorialists said that President Biden should withdraw from the presidential race because of his poor performance.
The Philadelphia Inquirer does not agree. Its editorial board says that Donald Trump should drop out of the race! Trump is a liar, a danger to democracy, and unfit for office. I’m with them.
Hurrah for the editorial board of The Philadelphia Inquirer! Every newspaper and media outlet in the nation should read this editorial, published on June 29.
President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.
But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.
In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.
Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?
To build himself up, Trump constantly tears the country down. There is no shining city on the hill. It’s just mourning in America.
Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a “failing” country. He called the United States a “third world nation.” He said, “we’re living in hell” and “very close to World War III.”
“People are dying all over the place,” Trump said, later adding “we’re literally an uncivilized country now.”
Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.
Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”
After scheming to overturn the 2020 election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.
The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.
Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.
Trump spent chunks of time watching TV, tweeting, and hanging out at his country clubs. Over his four-year term, Trump played roughly 261 rounds of golf.
As president, Trump didn’t read the daily intelligence briefs. He continued to use his personal cell phone, allowing Chinese spies to listen to his calls. During one Oval Office meeting, Trump shared highly classified intelligence with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador.
Trump’s term did plenty of damage and had few accomplishments. The much-hyped wall didn’t get built. Infrastructure week was a recurring joke. Giant tax cuts made the rich richer, while fueling massive deficits for others to pay for years. His support for coal, oil drilling and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement worsened the growing impact of climate change.
Trump stacked the judiciary with extreme judges consisting mainly of white males, including a number who the American Bar Association rated as not qualified. A record number of cabinet officials were fired or left the office. The West Wing was in constant chaos and infighting.
Many Trump appointees exited under a cloud of corruption, grifting and ethical scandals. Trump’s children made millions off the White House. His dilettante son-in-law got $2 billion from the Saudi government for his fledgling investment firm even though he never managed money before.
Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths. He boasts about stacking the Supreme Court with extreme right-wingers who are stripping away individual rights, upending legal precedents, and making the country less safe. If elected, Trump may add to the court’s conservative majority.
If anything, Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the presidential debate stage. Why even give him a platform?
Trump allegedly stole classified information and tried to overturn an election. His plans for a second term are worse than the last one. We cannot be serious about letting such a crooked clown back in the White House.
If anything, Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the presidential debate stage. Why even give him a platform?
Yes, Biden had a horrible night. He’s 81 and not as sharp as he used to be. But Biden on his worst day remains lightyears better than Trump on his best.
Biden must show that he is up to the job. This much is clear: He has a substantive record of real accomplishments, fighting the pandemic, combating climate change, investing in infrastructure, and supporting working families and the most vulnerable.
Biden has surrounded himself with experienced people who take public service seriously. He has passed major bipartisan legislation despite a dysfunctional Republican House majority.
Biden believes in the best of America. He has rebuilt relationships with allies around the world and stood up to foes like Russia and China.
There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be.
Yes, we live in a different world, one in which the decent man who holds our highest office is, in effect, now being asked to hand over the White House to a convicted criminal who will abandon Ukraine, kowtow to Putin, trash our environmental regulations, strip away the rights of women, BIPOC and LGBTQ people, and establish a right-wing dictatorship. Have we gone completely nuts?
Now that the initial shock of Biden’s poor performance in last night’s debate is fading, there are several bottom-line facts that should not be overlooked.
Biden has been an excellent President. Trump was a failed President, impeached twice, who inspired an insurrection intended to overthrow the government and the Constitution. Historians have judged Trump to be the worst of all presidents.
Biden has many legislative accomplishments: the Infrastructure bill, which directed billions of dollars to repair our nation’s crumbling bridges, tunnels, roads, and other vital parts of the economy. His CHIPS act brings high-tech jobs back to the U.S. and has already encouraged more than $300 billion in new investments. His efforts to create good union jobs and to revive unions strengthen the middle class. He has also relentlessly tried to reduce the massive debt that college students are saddled with.
By contrast, Trump’s only legislative accomplishment was a massive tax cut for the 1% and corporations.
Biden has aggressively promoted action to curb climate change. Trump opposed any effort to deal with climate change, forbade the use of the term, and insists that it is a hoax.
Biden appointed highly accomplished people to his cabinet, with few exceptions; Trump appointed rightwing extremists and had a high turnover among the few qualified people he appointed.
Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who were prepared (though they didn’t admit it in their hearings) to overturn Roe v. Wade and to gut gun control. if re-elected, he will have the opportunity to appoint more extremists to the Supreme Court who want to roll back the New Deal.
Biden has revived NATO. Trump wants to withdraw from NATO.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden rallied Europe to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Trump wants to abandon Ukraine and let Putin take whatever he wants in Europe.
Biden respects the Constitution. Trump does not. Trump refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election, despite losing more than 60 court decisions against his claims. Trump refused during the debate to accept the results of the 2024 election. Trump undermines respect for the Constitution, the electoral system, the judicial system.
Biden is not a good speaker. He is not a good debater. He has a slow gait. He is a good President. He is actually a GREAT President.
And Trump is a demagogue, a world-class liar, a wannabe Fascist, and a danger to the nation and the democratic institutions that are the soul of our nation.
I repeat, Biden has been a great President. If he doesn’t step aside, as many nervous people urge, I will support him. With my heart, my soul, and my wallet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 