Trump's theory/threat of governance is pure minority rule
The only question is how much political violence must be sanctioned by the state to uphold his version of American Apartheid
Donald Trump’s lawyers went to extremes to claim a president’s immunity before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, basically claiming that any criminal activity by a president would need to be first deemed so by a Senate impeachment trial before it could ever go to court:
“A president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?” Judge Florence Y. Pan asked. “Would such a president be subject to criminal prosecution if he’s not impeached?”
D. John Sauer, representing Trump, insisted that for any crime connected to a president’s “official duties,” the “political process” of impeachment and conviction by the Senate “would have to occur” before prosecution. He predicted that if a president was involved in murder, he would be “speedily” impeached.
It’s not as crazy an argument as it first appears. The president is a special and unique actor within our political system. If that office can be readily subjected to criminal proceedings, then the job becomes impossible. So, the Constitution has this remedy of impeachment by the House followed by trail by the Senate, the notion being that a political consensus would be required to overthrow the will of the voting public who put that individual into office.
So far, so good.
The problem arises, of course, when you’re talking about a House and Senate controlled by the same party as the president, but, even there, the system is counting on the reasonableness of individual legislators.
But what if there is no reasonableness? What if the political system is so polarized and the president enjoys such a strong cult of personality that he can pretty much do whatever he wants?
The assassination-by-Seals scenario is hardly far-fetched. Thanks to the Global War on Terror, America now has a long and well-established history of assassinations of both foreign individuals and US citizens operating abroad. The leap from declaring that one person an enemy of the state for terrorism reasons to declaring a domestic political opponent for … hell, let’s just call it terrorism again … is short, short, short under the right rhetorical conditions or if the whole thing is just manufactured per some Sen. Joe McCarthy (He’s a card-carrying terrorist who deserves death!) working hand-in-glove with a rogue president.
Recall, this was an administration, in combination with its political movement and political proxies, that has openly called for the execution of the Vice President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for being essentially traitors.
Of course, that’s all just “rhetoric” “political free speech” until you do it. Mein Kampf was also just a political crackpot’s bestseller in Weimar Germany at one point, subject to all manner of scary and dismissive interpretations.
But, at this point, such hypotheticals involving Trump remind me of the discussions we had in the Pentagon post-9/11 regarding bin Laden and would he have used a tactical nuke on one of those planes hitting the towers if he could have? Of course bin Laden would have, and I think the same would be true of Trump if given the opportunity.
Anybody care to roll that dice?
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