Does This Supreme Court Ruling Give Trump Absolute Power?

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Okay, the Supreme Court hyperbole and Kings. Just when you thought it was going to be a nice and easy Fourth of July week. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. A lot. We have to go over here on the program. First and foremost, obviously the big story. Supreme Court concluded the constitution requires immunity from criminal prosecution for official presidential acts. Now again, bear with me people, okay? This is a lot of legalese that we’re gonna go through. I’m gonna try to make as best sense of it as I possibly can. I’ve spent a lot of time going to various different legal scholars, doing my homework when it comes to making sense out of this. Right now the media

The media is all about getting the people going. There was a scene in a Will Ferrell movie from ages ago, it was called Blades of Glory, and Will Ferrell is running on the treadmill and he’s singing a song by the Black Eyed Peas, you know that My Hump song? And his partner there is, you know, what does that even mean, what you’re saying? And he’s like, you know, it doesn’t matter what it means, it just gets the people going. And…

That’s what the media is trying to do now, is just trying to get the people going. When you see that, when you see your emotions start to race based upon various different stories and things that are being said, take a deep breath, take a couple steps back and think it through. And that’s what we’re gonna do today here on the program. So Trump versus US concluded that the constitution requires immunity from criminal prosecution for official presidential.

acts. It is not about Donald Trump. I don’t care what the people in the news are telling you has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It is about protecting the presidency. Whether it be Joe Biden, whether it be Barack Obama, whether it be George W. Bush, whether it be Donald Trump, and in the ability, in essence for government to function.

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David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley had a peace today and they cited Federalist number 70. Alexander Hamilton explains that the executive branch is embodied in a single person, the president. To avoid the, quote, habitual feebleness and dilatoriness inherent in multi -member bodies like Congress, a unitary president ensures vigor in the exercise of executive power for the benefit of the nation.

A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution. And a government ill -executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be in practice a bad government. Now, this case, because this deals with criminality, builds upon the Nixon Fitzgerald case from the early 1980s.

which recognized presidential immunity from civil lawsuits predicated on official acts. The justice in that case, Lewis Powell wrote that such immunity is mandated by the president’s unique position and rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers. Lawsuits could distract a president from his public duties to the detriment of not only the president in his office, but also the nation.

and that the presidency was designed to serve. Now think about that. That was a civil case. Okay, civil cases, okay, you lose, you have to pay money. Criminal cases, you might have to go to jail. Do you want the president of the United States when acting in official duties, having to consider whether or not his successor, his successor might go after him?

for something that he did in basically following through with his or her official duties. Chief Justice John Roberts, again, what I just said, he said, the peculiar public opprobium that attaches to criminal proceedings, they are plainly more likely to distort presidential decision -making than the potential payment of civil damages.

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Without immunity, a president inclined to take one course of action based on the public interest may instead opt for another, apprehensive that criminal penalties may befall him upon his departure from office. Immunity is therefore crucial to protect the independence of the executive branch, but the immunity the court recognized isn’t without limit. There’s a good point right there, okay? It does have its limits.

And this is why this case is going back to the lower courts. And they’re going to talk about official acts and unofficial acts. Something that came to mind with this yesterday while going through all of this and this morning is if you recall, you remember Barack Obama. He killed an American citizen with the drone. Remember, it was al -Awiki. And. That’s not legal, technically.

Again, he was carrying out his duties, official acts of the president fighting the war on terror. Trump could have gone after him if, you know, again, if he wanted to say it was criminal. But no, what they’re saying is the president is protected by doing things like this. The president enjoys absolute immunity for the acts undertaken within his exclusive power as granted by the Constitution.

Once it is determined that the president acted within the scope of his exclusive authority, his discretion in exercising such authority cannot be subject to further judicial examination. Okay. Again, you can talking about using the Justice Department to investigate election fraud. The president has authority over the Justice Department. So again, Trump is immune from charges relating to every sort of interactions

that he has with it. Again, you can go back in time. The president doesn’t have immunity from prosecution for private acts. And they mentioned, go back to Clinton versus Jones, Paula Jones, which denied Bill Clinton’s claim of immunity in a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment during his time as Arkansas governor. Presidents aren’t above the law.

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They are immune from civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution only for actions undertaken pursuant to the highest law, the Constitution.

The court rejected Jack Smith’s argument that determining whether acts are official and therefore immune can wait until after the trial, which makes no sense whatsoever because then you would have people going after presidents, throwing the stuff up at a wall to see what was going to stick and then having it thrown out after the fact. It’s absolutely nonsensical. You know, let’s get into, there was a great piece by Dan

McLaughlin on National Review. I want to get into Sotomayor. I want to get into some of the dissent here, the kings and the hyperbole and the things that were said. But first, I mean, let’s think about this for a second and what we’ve just seen happen over the course of Trump’s presidency and impeachment and the Constitution.

and kings. Kings, who thinks of king? Kings don’t go anywhere. Kings don’t go anywhere. They get overthrown, they get killed, and they’re replaced. Kings are there for life unless they decide to step down, correct? I mention this all the time. The beauty of our Constitution, we have elections, and elections have

consequences that that is the the ultimate check on power. Is it not? We also have impeachment as well to deal with this. So this this King stuff to me is a little nonsensical and Dan McLaughlin in his piece, he talks about the ridiculous argument that decision turns presidents into Kings and

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gives them a green light to murder whoever they want. They can murder their political opponents without consequence. And again, he makes the point. If Donald Trump was a king, why is he campaigning right now to try to get his job back? You got eight years. That’s it. That’s the most you can have. You can get impeached by the House and thrown out by the Senate.

You know, you can give orders to have things done and guess what? Your executive orders can get tossed out. The courts can rule against you. Again, I talked about this yesterday and the Supreme Court decisions against the administrative state, which is a part of the executive branch of government. Guess what? The president lost power.

The presidency has lost power because of that and in my opinion that’s an absolutely fantastic thing, cutting the administrative state down to side. Now, like I said, presidents, like anyone else, can be civilly sued or criminally charged for their private acts, even those taken during their time in office. Again, is not, Trump have to go back, correct me if I’m wrong, to a courtroom there for criminal sentencing?

And did he have to cut a big check there to watch it aim there? Well, I forget what her name was anyway.

Again, Trump, Trump, again, he thought the election was rigged. He tried to hold on to power and it didn’t work out, did it? Our constitution prevailed. The vice president said, no, I’m not going to, I’m not going to do this. Governors, state legislatures, secretary of state, the most, a lot of the caucus in the Senate, federal state courts. Again, these are people that he appointed as well.

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And many of these people are still in office. Okay, let’s take that aside and let’s go to again the wise Latina, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Imagine a president states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes no matter what it takes to do so, an official act. He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival, unofficial act.

Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation, the president’s public admission, a premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. When he uses his official powers in any way under the majority’s reasoning, he will now be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy SEAL Team Six 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. This is Sotomayor. Again, reading like some sort of bad Netflix movie.

This is Justice Contagio Brown Jackson. Even a hypothetical president who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics or one who indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority’s new presidential accountability model. While the president may have the authority to decide to remove the attorney general, for example, the question here is whether the president has the option to remove the attorney general by say,

poisoning him to death. Put another way, the issue here is not whether the president has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the president exercises that authority. Okay. The president, president, one of the president’s powers, he’s commander in chief, he can have people killed. Okay.

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He can have people killed. The removal power does not. And again, we, you know, McLaughlin mentioned the same thing that Dan said here. McLaughlin, this talked about Obama having Anwar Alawicki killed by drone strike. And they also mention it in 1863, Abraham Lincoln ordered in a least arguable accord with the laws of war that day that Confederate soldiers would be executed in one to run reprisal for Confederate executions of black

Union soldiers killed in violation of the laws of war.

Now, it is nonetheless a power constrained by law before it is even carried out. Let’s say, let’s say Dan says that Joe Biden wishes to have Trump killed. Now, I kid you not right now, you go on to the sewer that is social media. Liberals are actually calling for this. Prominent ones, I ain’t been calling. You know what, you gotta take, you know, the president now needs to take Trump out.

Liberals are calling for this right now. Anyway, again, unlikely that Biden has individual special ops teams on speed dial. Even when the commander in chief must act with great purpose, let’s say, there’s a chain of command. Even a president bent on going around the defense secretary would at some point need to engage a general officer.

then go through him or her to get the SEALs involved. Now we’re talking about a much bigger conspiracy. All of these people have sworn independent oaths to the Constitution and are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice to obey only lawful orders. All of them know that they could and would be prosecuted for an unlawful killing, even if the president would not be.

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Special operators work at the outer limits of what the law allows in terms of killing, capturing, and invading, but precisely because of that, they are deeply sensitive to ensuring that they know what the mission and the legal rules of engagement are. They have their own legal advisors. Ron DeSantis, when he was in Iraq with the Navy, was basically the full -time legal advisor to a SEAL team.

a flagrantly unlawful assassination of a prominent American politician would face formidable practical hurdles and getting carried out by these people.

Dan’s argument is what if they did? What if the president had a hardcore devoted followers in the military who believed that he needed to kill someone to prevent election from being stolen, democracy being ended, Jim Crow 2 .0 reinstated? Or what if the president and a few well -placed White House aides succeeded in picking a target and then deceiving a drone operator or a SEAL team as to identify of the target? And what if this was a compass with sufficient speed and or secrecy?

that none of the other available constitutional checks could be brought to bear. Think about the political consequences. President could be impeached and removed from office unless you really think senators of this party would face no public consequence for acquitting him in such an extreme case. Everybody else involved could face life in prison and or capital punishment. President’s party would face ruination at the polls.

of addictive Congress could abolish whole military units and end scores of careers of officers even tenuously related to the plot. He tried to wall himself off with pardons. A president could be stripped of secret service protection and left to the mercies of the mob. And if the president actively misled the military, not as to some details, but as to whom they were killing because the president was operating domestically without the slightest fig leaf of military justification, the court’s framing of the immunity inquiry would

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likely leave a lot of running room for prosecution.

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Okay, gonna Kings, SEAL teams take out.

people. It’s stretch. It’s hyperbole is what we’re dealing with right now. But also what we’re dealing with right now. Let’s take that and put that aside. And listen, you may disagree. And there’s plenty of I mean, those legal scholars out there that are saying, you know, the opposite. I think it’s Supreme Court justices are worried about this. Again, the point is, is that I want to constrain

presidential power, like I was thrilled, thrilled about the Supreme Court cases that have been coming down the pike that have been constraining the president’s power. But you know, the irony right now, if you really want to think about the irony right now, what president, what president has been spiking the football over the past several months about defying courts and defying the Supreme Court?

That would be Joe Biden. That would, that would, that would be Joe Biden coming out and yeah. yeah. Supreme court style. We didn’t let the Supreme court stop us when it came to forgiving student loans. So, Joe Biden came out yesterday, read directly off a teleprompter directly off a teleprompter. That’s all he can do.

right now as it seems and he said for all practical purposes today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent. Biden said the president will no longer be constrained by the law and that the only limits will be imposed by the president alone. This decision today has continued the court’s attack in recent years. Here we go.

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on a wide range of long established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights, civil rights, to taking away a woman’s right to choose, to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of the nation.

First and foremost, let the hyperbole, let the politicking begin. The Democrats right now are backed into a corner. They’re backed into a corner because of Biden and his situation. What’s going on? We all know what’s going on. To them, they see this as a tremendous

opportunity politically, an enormous opportunity politically, much like the Dobbs decision they used as a political opportunity. In fact, in fact, yesterday, Kamala Harris, she actually got called out, called out on Twitter, got fact checked on Twitter because she, she put out on Twitter that Donald Trump would ban abortion nationwide.

President Joe Biden, I will do everything in our power to stop and restore women’s reproductive freedom. I mean, they’re still beating that drum. Got called out. Community notes. Basically saying that what she put out there was false or lacking context because Trump has said abortion limits should be left to the states. And he’s put that out there. He also mentioned it in the debate, but that’s not going to stop people from lying. They will say what?

they want and they’re going to say what they want with this. And I guess the new buzzwords is I dissent. I dissent. They’re good. The community organizers are again, get the people going in some way, shape, matter, or form. They’re going to look to get the people going on this with all sorts of nonsense. Again, remember how they got the people going after Donald Trump won?

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Right at the election, remember all of the women and all the hysterical nonsense that was taking place in Washington DC. Remember the vagina hats? Remember the pink vagina hats that they were all wearing? Well, again, this is the politics right now of this. And again, I’m curious to see. I’m curious to see how far it’s gonna go. I’m curious to see how far.

people are going to buy into this King nonsense. You’ve already got people calling for, again, the impeachment of Supreme Court justices there. AOC, Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control. Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It’s up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.

I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return. Good luck with that, AOC.

Again, this is where we’ve gotten down so far down in dirt with our politics. And again, I go back to the using impeachment for nonsensical things. Again, high crimes and misdemeanors. Really, Bill Clinton? High crimes and misdemeanors? Crap with Donald Trump? High crimes and misdemeanors? Try to pull something off with Biden? No. No, it should be used in certain cases and now…

It’s thrown around all the time. But anyway, again, we’re going to continue to follow this. I’m curious to see, curious to see whether the left, whether this is going to stick. In my opinion right now, I think that to some degree, they might benefit politically from this decision, depending on upon they use it. Most certainly.

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most certainly have changed the channel. The channel has been changed. It’s gone from, you know, the president of the United States is not well. We all saw it. We all know what’s going on. President of the United States, it’s moved from that to what the Supreme Court did and kings and executions and nonsense, which again,

At this point, I most certainly benefits the Democrats, you know, the right Trump, the other ones out there are claiming, hey, this is great. We don’t have to spend all this time in a courtroom. Yeah, I understand that. But you got to understand who you’re playing ball against. OK, these guys, these guys are great at twisting things and they will say anything. They will say anything. Again, I’ll go back and, you know, Harry Reid member and Harry Reid.

said about Mitt Romney. I had a guy and he said Mitt Romney hasn’t paid his taxes in years and years and years. Just complete lie, key provocation. But it got picked up. Picked up, you know, Romney didn’t even know how to handle it when the press, yeah, we heard you’re not paying your taxes.

Then they go back to, you know, Harry Reid, Harry Reid after Obama won. And what you said was a complete lie. What did Harry Reid say? Well, we won, didn’t we?

You gotta understand who you’re doing business with, okay? You gotta understand the motivations and what the other side is capable of doing at this point in time and how they’re gonna go about using this ruling. Anyway, hope I made some sense out of this. I know, long podcast today. Watchdog on wallstreet .com. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.