He’s smarter than the generals. He’s smarter than the doctors. But he’s clueless when it comes to law?
Is there any acceptable answer to the question of whether “persons” are entitled to due process other than “yes”? And yet, when pressed, his answer remained the same.
Ms. Welker reminded the president that the Fifth Amendment says as much.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said again. “It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.” Left unmentioned was how anyone could be sure these people were undocumented immigrants, let alone criminals, without hearings.
Was he unfamiliar with the Fifth Amendment? So he claimed, which is why he relief on “his brilliant lawyers.”
Mr. Trump responded “I don’t know” one more time and referred to his “brilliant lawyers” when Ms. Welker asked whether, as president, he needed to “uphold the Constitution of the United States.”
Putting aside the fact that these are not “his” lawyers, despite his belief that the lawyers on the federal government’s payroll work for him rather than the nation, is there any rational, acceptable, response to whether he needs to uphold the Constitution, that thing he pretended to swear to preserve, protect, and defend before he went off to inaugural parties, other than “yes”?
By Trump’s telling, his only connection to law is through Attorney General Pam Bondi, and he does what she tells him. The claim, of course, is nonsensical, that he is somehow unaware of rulings against him, upholding the facilitation of Abrego Garcia’s return, or that he does what he’s told. In Trumpland, nobody tells Trump what to do. Trump does whatever Trump wants to do, no matter how mind-bogglingly unlawful or stupid.
Is this Trump’s way of trying to pretend that he’s abiding by the judicial decisions, whether Supreme Court or those inferior courts he doesn’t believe have any power to tell him anything? After all, if he violates the order, then it’s all Bondi’s fault, since he’s just doing what she’s telling him to do. Is Trump attempting to create plausible deniability that he has caused a constitutional crisis by throwing Bondi under the bus?
But is it plausible? Can it ever be plausible that a president is so fundamentally clueless that he’s incapable of reading a Supreme Court opinion, incapable of reading the Constitution, incapable of having, whether by himself or through any of the legal staff at his disposal, any grasp of what courts order?
Conversely, what if Trump’s defiance of law and court order is claimed to be based on the counsel of his attorney general? Can Trump do as he pleases and claim that he was told to do so, that the law permitted or mandated he do so, by Bondi? Bondi told him to do nothing to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return? Bondi told him that the Twenty-Second Amendment didn’t apply? Bondi said X? It’s not as if the Republican majority Congress has any problem with it.
At what point is the president of the United States obliged to take his oath of office seriously and preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and respect the orders of federal courts, or can he avoid responsibility by claiming “I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer”?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply, within reason.
The answer is self-evident. The real question is whether it’s plausible to his MAGA base, and that’s not a real question either as they’ll believe anything he says, no matter how ridiculous. But throwing Bondi (or, I suspect, any other lawyers working in the administration) under the bus is an easy enough gimmick to deflect responsibility.
Per Judge Luttig, “The temptation here is to dismiss the president’s words as just another gaffe, of which he makes many. But I don’t think that we should do that. I’m quite confident that the president was saying what is on his mind and that is that he, the president of the United States, doesn’t necessarily believe that he is obligated to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as it is interpreted by the Supreme Court.”
I’m inclined to think that the judge is right, or largely so. Trump likely believes that he shouldn’t be bound by the Constitution and is sort of floating a trial balloon here. He has no moral compass and little knowledge or understanding of history, so the question in his mind is simply, “Can I get away with this?”.
Congress seems unwilling or unable to constrain his authoritarian leanings. I hope SCOTUS will stand up to him, but worry they won’t…
Don’t forget who his mentor was: that sniveling little rat, Roy Cohen.
There may be a similar precedent for Trump’s thinking on this matter. Didn’t GWB claim to just be following legal advice from OLC to justify his torture regime? And wasn’t that claim mostly accepted by the incoming Obama admin in order to exonerate Bush and the agencies responsible?