The justices seem to think that the power they apparently just handed Donald Trump can’t be used against them someday. Right. (My emphasis bolded)
This week, the Supreme Court managed to fail to meet the already extremely low expectations most sane people already had for it. First, during the Idaho EMTALA case on whether hospitals receiving federal funding can refuse to provide abortions to women who are actively dying as a result of a pregnancy, we heard debate over which, and how many, organs a woman had to lose before an abortion becomes legally acceptable.
When Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Donald Trump’s lawyer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”, he replied, “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that would well be an official act.”
A democracy cannot survive when its supreme leader can arbitrarily decide that it’s in the nation’s best interest to rub out his opponents, and then leave it to some future court to decide whether it was an official act, because he’ll get away with it as long as there aren’t 67 votes in the Senate to impeach.
Everybody here know how the last two attempt, especially the second one went. See below.
But the justices did not laugh this argument out of court. Quite the contrary:
They were uninterested in the actual case at hand or its consequences. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation, perhaps captured my response to the Supreme Court’s arguments best: “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’
Thank you, Moscow Mitch McConnell.
People forget that the first German concentration camp (Dachau) was built in 1933 to hold members of the Communist and Social Democratic Parties, and Trump has made it clear that he’s building enough camps to process a minimum of 11 million people (migrants, at least for starters).
The conservatives on the Supreme Court have also exposed their hubris, willful ignorance, and foolishness to the entire world in stark terms, and it will cost them and the nation dearly in the long run. They somehow presume that if Trump is elected and goes full dictator, that the power of the court, and their reputation, will save them.
When Trump is president again, he is likely to believe that he has the option of “removing” any member of the Supreme Court who defies him.
After all, if Trump can rub out a political opponent, can’t he do the same to an uncooperative jurist?
Trump and Republicans will be fully cognizant that the court controls nothing once every federal agency has been packed with loyalists.
In the end, the court appears to be doing everything to destroy itself, democracy, and the union, with its own arrogance and lack of foresight.
Per Second impeachment of Donald Trump, Wikipedia:
If Section 4 of the 25th Amendment action had been carried out, it would have made Pence the acting president, assuming the "powers and duties of the office" of the president.
Pence, who would have been required to initiate removal, stated that he would not invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump.[26]
Per Second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Wikipedia:
The House adopted one article of impeachment against Trump: incitement of insurrection. He is the only U.S. president and only federal official to be impeached twice.
At the conclusion of the trial, the Senate voted 57–43 to convict Trump of inciting insurrection, falling 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution, and Trump was therefore acquitted.
After the vote on the acquittal, Mitch McConnell said, "There's no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day."[10] but he voted against conviction due to his interpretation of the United States Constitution.[11]
IMHO, he also ordered the other Republican senators to vote for acquittal. Per link #11, above:
After Voting To Acquit, McConnell Torches Trump As Responsible For Riot
"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day," McConnell said shortly after the 57-43 Senate vote that ended in the former president's acquittal.
But McConnell said that the process of impeachment and conviction is a "limited tool" and that he believes Trump is not "constitutionally eligible for conviction."
Limited, how? There is an indictment and a trial.
"The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the nation's overarching moral tribunal," he said.
It is the only legal way to remove a president per the Constitution. Unless assassination, if you believe this Supreme Court