 |
| Trump thanks John Roberts (Getty) |
Why did Donald Trump, after his speech to a joint session of Congress, thank John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS)? No clear answer to that question has emerged, but the exchange was curious, especially given the Roberts court's tendency to issue dubious rulings in Trump's favor. Was Trump thanking Roberts for cutting him several breaks, some of profound importance, at the nation's highest court? Trump has denied that, but given the president's tendency to lie at a prodigious rate, a reasonable person could be forgiven for not putting much stock in that denial. So why did Trump make it a point to shake Roberts' hand, pat him on the arm, and thank him in about as profuse a manner as the usually ungracious Trump can muster?
Let's approach that question by examining issues surrounding the exchange, as presented in a jointly published post by The Daily Beast and Yahoo! News under the headline "Trump Thanks Chief Supreme Court Justice on Hot Mic: ‘Won’t Forget It'."
Not only were Trump's words caught on a hot mic, they were picked up on a roving camera. A C-SPAN2 video on YouTube can be viewed at this link. William Vaillancourt provides more details:
Donald Trump thanked Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and added that he “Won’t forget it” after delivering a speech to Congress Tuesday night.
“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” he said, shaking Roberts’ hand and then tapping the George W. Bush appointee on the arm.
It was not immediately unclear what, exactly, Trump was thanking him for—though there have been more than a few instances over the past few years of Supreme Court intervention in favor of the president.
The questions of the moment? What is the "it" that Trump won't forget? And why is "it" so important that Trump twice said he wouldn't forget it."
Trump provided an explanation, as Fox News reported under the headline "Trump scolds ‘sleazebag’ pundits for speculating why he thanked Justice Roberts following address to Congress; CNN, MSNBC pundits assumed the worst about Trump’s interaction with Justice Roberts. Trump presented his version of what happened on social media, dripping with the usual contempt he holds for the media:
The Fake ‘Play the Ref’ News, in order to create a divide between me and our great U.S. Supreme Court, heard me say last night, loudly and openly as I was walking past the Justices on the way to the podium, ‘thank you,’ to Chief Justice John Roberts. Like most people, I don’t watch Fake News CNN or MSDNC, but I understand they are going ‘crazy’ asking what is it that I was thanking Justice Roberts for? They never called my office to ask, of course, but if they had I would have told these sleazebag ‘journalists’ that I thanked him for SWEARING ME IN ON INAUGURATION DAY, AND DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB IN SO DOING! The Fake News never quits," Trump posted on Truth Social.
A number of commentators were not buying that. Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would not take Trump's words seriously. From the Fox News report:
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes suggested that Trump was thanking Roberts for "paving the way" for him to return to the White House.
"Donald Trump understands that John Roberts is his guy who sprang him and saved him from prosecution with his ruling on presidential immunity, which ultimately paved the way for Trump to be elected president again," Hayes told MSNBC viewers.
MSNBC host Symone Sanders asked New York University law professor Melissa Murray if it was a "preemptive thank you for something that’s about to happen."
"There is a lot Donald Trump could have thanked his court for, namely the immunity ruling… big get out of jail free card," Murray responded.
Over on CNN, political director David Chalian said he would "love to know" what Trump was thanking Roberts for. He suggested it could have been for the "inauguration," but another panelist quickly chimed in, claiming it was "obviously immunity."
For the record, I'm not even close to buying Trump's explanation. For one, I can't understand why anyone would believe Trump, considering his history of looking Americans right in their faces and spewing rapid-fire falsehoods. I agree with Chris Hayes that this is about Roberts "paving the way" for Trump's return to the White House.
If you read Trump's words carefully, he thanks Roberts twice -- and by using the word "again," Trump suggests he already had thanked Roberts at least once. Trump is a transactional guy, a cold-blooded deal-maker, and he's not one to grovel like this unless someone has done him a favor, a big one -- one that might have kept him out of prison. Has Roberts done such a favor for Trump? He sure has -- on more than one occasion, and those rulings have nothing to do with the inauguration. Vaillancourt spells it out:
Last year, Roberts authored a decision granting former presidents sweeping immunity from prosecution, in effect helping Trump avoid facing trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. He had been indicted for offenses relating to his alleged election subversion in Washington, D.C., and in Georgia.
Another case that the conservative-majority court decided in Trump’s favor last year was allowing him to be kept on the ballot after some states pointed to the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists from holding federal office.
And in another Jan. 6-related case, Roberts wrote for the court that obstruction charges against Jan. 6 defendants had to be narrower than what prosecutors had brought. Trump’s D.C. case included two obstruction charges.
The ballot case, which originated in Colorado, produced an opinion styled Trump v. Anderson that featured a number of peculiarities. One, Trump
was a per curiam decision that was not signed. One gets the feeling
that Roberts shepherded the case through the SCOTUS process, but wanted
to maintain cover by not affixing his name to it. Perhaps Roberts did
not want to receive credit for an opinion that was based on jumbled, inconsistent legal reasoning, according to Lawfare. (Also, see this analysis from the Cato Institute.) In fact, large portions of the ruling do
not appear to be supported by precedent. It all adds up to a document
that Roberts seems to have pulled out of his fanny, simply because he
wanted Trump on the ballot -- whether he deserved to be there under the
law or not.
ProPublica reported there was no clear precedent in Trump v. Anderson, and that's how the opinion reads:
[The 14th amendment] — passed in 1866 and ratified in 1868 — is probably best known for its first section, which stated that all Americans should receive equal protection under the law. But the amendment’s third section took up a different issue: what to do with former members of the Confederacy who had “engaged in insurrection” — or had given “aid or comfort” to insurrectionists — and now wanted to hold elected office in the government they had fought against.
More than 150 years later, a constitutional fix crafted with Jefferson Davis in mind is being used to argue that former President Trump is ineligible to be president again. There is no clear precedent in the case. The text of the 14th Amendment’s third section is confusing and vague. The range of potential decisions by the high court is vast. But whatever the court decides, the ruling will have enormous implications for American democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment