In normal times, the Supreme Court would've smacked down claims of presidential immunity almost immediately, but we're not in normal times, and there's a reason why the conservative majority of Federalist Society bagmen waited until the last possible moment to provide this insane ruling.
Don't even need hypotheticals. For Nixon and Clinton they were confronted with POTUS saying "but I'm POTUS and I don't wanna" and the Court said a polite variant of "sit the fuck down, Mr President, you are not a King". But if you want to overthrow the Republic? "Why, yes, your majesty, go for it"
Excellent skeet. And I can still hear David Cannadine in my left ear saying, "George the Third was mad, bad, sad, and intransigent" thirty-five years ago in the lecture hall.
So if I understand the arguments and timing to date--
they wanted to announce late in season, and based on their arguments of total presidential immunity, so that Biden ordering seal team 6 to assassinate Trump would be fully supported by SCOTUS--
Did I follow these trials correctly?
And choices--
Risk an election that trump & many gop have said they will not honor if they lose, or
Take the power scotus just gave you and use it first?
TBH, seriously though - I think they've revealed something. They don't think a Dem POTUS would actually abuse this and think it will protect their guy. But, if he loses, they've protected every future Dem POTUS from prosecution, it seems. Short sighted in that sense.
Alito/Thomas won't live forever. If a sane person gets to make the replacement nominations, the majority on SCOTUS should (eventually) look very different. I'm just not sure we have that much timeline left before everything collapses.
This throws a bucket of ice water on Gym Jordan's fraudulent little "weaponization of government" scheme; not that it will make a difference to him or folks like him (like Johnson). They think it only applies to their guy.
One could argue the President's oath of office would require it, and after Trump it's the corrupt federalist society members of the court to be taken out.
I don't doubt that they knew this would be unpopular outside of conservative circles, but what do they really gain by waiting till the last day, besides delaying headlines a couple months?
Yeah but they're in lifetime positions. It's nice for them to get away, but for the soulless members of the court, they don't much care about criticism.
Effectively, I believe you're correct, but Alito at least is notoriously thin-skinned. It's not enough for him to gleefully dismantle the rule of law, he also wants to be loved for it.
Which is disturbing. There is a sort of logic behind it, but I doubt they'd find 34 senators to sign off on it, and most of the Dem voting base would probably never vote for them again. Unless there's 34 *Republican* senators who want to uh, clean up their party. (Still disturbing.)
Why not just arrest him and charge him with treason *now,* as a civilian, based on his public campaign plans and promises. The political namby pamby is ridiculous @.@
