Noah: I think “shoot them in the legs” was him trying to create plausible deniability, because he thought he could’ve been prosecuted for saying “shoot them in the head”

With regard to former Sec. of Defense Mark Esper’s chilling account that then-President Trump wanted troops confronting protestors in Lafayette Park to “shoot them in the legs”, I’d love to hear someone ask the follow up question whether Trump understood that people would fall & get hit in torso.

To be clear, I understand that leg wounds can easily be fatal. I just would love to hear whether Trump understood “shoot them in the legs” was an impossible-to-achieve, idiotic request when dealing massed troops confronting a mass protest from a distance.

I don’t think he gave two shits whether protestors died.

I think “shoot them in the legs” was him trying to create plausible deniability, because he thought he could’ve been prosecuted for saying “shoot them in the head”

But, he absolutely knows that if they “shot them in the legs” they’d be killing people. That’s what he wanted, he just didn’t think he could get away with saying that out loud. After the immunity ruling, he knows he *can* get away with saying it out loud

But now Chief Justice Roberts has (to his everlasting shame) enabled fascism by taking away the prospect for criminal prosecution. I hope Roberts receives total consciousness on his deathbed and goes to his grave knowing that his entire legacy will be as a minion of evil.

Let me be clear. In my opinion, John Roberts has joined Roger Taney (Dred Scott - slavery) as a Chief Justice who will be remembered as an evil man. Not just wrong, but worthy of eternal condemnation for trying to destroy the Republic.

Before the decision came down, I actually thought he & Barrett would join Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in saying "Of course the President CANNOT order political rivals killed, detained w/out charge, etc." In Trump v Hawaii, Roberts led the opinion that rejected the Korematsu decision. Just unreal.

bsky.app/profile/bens...

Post-presidential immunity ruling, what is the likelihood of SCOTUS finding a way to select the next president itself? This seemed like a marginal possibility before, but now it's hard for me to imagine they wouldn't leap at the opportunity, no matter how flimsy their argument.

I keep thinking that it's not Trump who's owning the SCOTUS but the opposite.

In authoritarian regimes, it’s pretty much always the executive that subjugates the judiciary, not the other way around. If that’s the Court’s play, they’re doomed.

I half-jokingly posted this a bit ago: bsky.app/profile/bens...

Dystopian election outcome #73: in a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS throws out the results and makes Roberts president. The rationale is based on a blatant misreading of constitutional law. Biden holds a press conference to say "I dissent" but steps down to preserve the peaceful transfer of power.

Which is damned impressive considering the reputation he'd been cultivating as an institutionalist trying to tame the most extreme impulses of some of his conservative colleagues. Then he decides to just leap into this shit show with both feet and lead the charge.

But I'm a big fan of your optimism that things will recover enough in the future for our grandchildren to look back on Roberts with the same perspective that we look back on Taney.

No Democratic President going forward should allow their oath of office to be administered by John Roberts. The next oath should be administered by someone like Capital Police Officer Eugene Goodman or a woman who has been victimized by the Dobbs decision.

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Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court in October 2018, creating the conservative majority. It took them less than six years to demolish the Constitution to make way for a king. Conservatives can't be trusted with power. Ever.

I think this is true, too. Ex-heads of state often see rising popularity long after leaving office, but their policies do not last and their sins fade with time. US jurisprudence generally *lasts a long time* and Roberts will be remembered as the architect of that pain for a generation or two.

"No citizen has rights that any president need respect." - John Roberts

That is absolutely positively correct. Until last week I considered Roberts to be in a tie with Taney. Roberts successfully proved this past week he assuredly deserves the title of worst Chief Justice of the United States in American history.

he even exonerated nixon with this ruling.

Concur.

I just hope that he lives long enough (not on the court, ideally) to see his name dragged into the mud and shit where it belongs. I hope he gets to see how the world eventually comes to view his court

There is an assumption this would make him sad.

I am confident, based on knowing many former Supreme Court clerks, that Roberts thinks a great deal about his legacy.

I had always hoped this would be what saved us. This, and his giant ego.

so did his legacy just slip his mind last week? or is trump v. us how he wants to be remembered?

He’s an arrogant smug prick who is convinced that he can get away with giving Trump a free pass. He thinks we’re all fucking morons and rubes, and the DC media is doing its damndest to prove him right

Either that or he's the guy @mattbors.bsky.social drew this about. He definitely exudes "you made me do this by noticing what I was doing"

I think he is a COWARD who was afraid the right would come after him if he stood up to Trump. I think he thinks his legacy will be adjudicated by the Heritage/Cato/Federalist Societies. I think he would be horrified to learn he will be remembered as the moral equivalent of Roland Freisler.

Amazon.com: Hitler's Executioner: Roland Freisler, President of the Nazi People's Court: 9781473889392: Ortner, Helmut: Bookswww.amazon.com Amazon.com: Hitler's Executioner: Roland Freisler, President of the Nazi People's Court: 9781473889392: Ortner, Helmut: Books

Who will be our white rose?

He has a lifetime appointment. They did not come after him when his court rejected all those election lawsuits. So I am not sure he is a coward as much as he is complicit. I doubt if he worries about his legacy anymore especially when the legacy writers, as you point out, are his people.

[sighs.] i thought the whole point of lifetime appointment was that you can do what's right and not what's popular because you won't ever have to run for office. you don't have to be afraid of people coming after you. [sighs again and pinches the bridge of his nose.]

Coward is right. I think had he split with the majority we would've had a somehow worse ruling written by Alito, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh. Had ACB fully split with the majority, Roberts would have gone with her so he could write that opinion and soften the impact on Trump as much as possible.

IMO he’s more like Freisler’s colleagues on the People’s Court (they were not prosecuted after the war, it must be said). Freisler himself was an entirely different thing-fanatical, psychologically unstable showman of the courtroom.

Right. From Roberts’ perspective, he’s killing it, legacy-wise. FedSoc, the Heritage Foundation, Claremont, all the right wing orgs will herald him as the architect of the right wing takeback of the country. Destroy the Civil Rights Act, the New Deal, everything up to Dred Scott. He’s a hero.

He’s a poor thinker, then.

I'd like him to receive that consciousness in the next month or so.

I think he, like a lot of folks like him who "pray on the streetcorners", don't actually care. He's a nihilist and doesn't actually care what his legacy is - Bill Barr had an interview about that where he basically said, "Yeah, and I'll be dead so I won't care what they say after I'm gone."

I was thinking this very scenario earlier.

Roberts let Alito write Dobbs. Why do you think he doesn't know what he did? Do you think he's stupid? Are you incredulous, or are you naive?

This is how you know he knows all that Christian heaven and hell stuff is actually bullshit

Nah he probably got the idea from his son in law telling him about IOF SOP