Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, July 11, 2024 "Supreme Court Declares Trump King"

“Supreme Court Declares Trump King”

At this rate, I may never get that historical overview of Palestine finished. Three or four weeks ago I interrupted it to comment on Trump’s 34 guilty verdicts (and how richly deserved they were). The day after that column came out, someone pretending to be me called the electric company and asked for my power to be cut off -I’m sure that was a complete coincidence.

This week, I have to set space aside to comment on the Supreme Court decision about Trump that came, with incredible irony, on the week of Independence Day. 248 years ago, we declared ourselves a nation -a nation without a king. Eleven years later, in 1787, we approved a Constitution laying out the powers of that nation’s government. Throughout the process, all the “founding fathers” agreed that the executive office of president is not the same as king, and that in America no one -no one -was above the law. Richard Nixon argued that “if the president does it, it’s not illegal” -but legal scholars did not agree. The very idea, in fact, has been unthinkable -to the extent that, when Donald Trump started making such claims to the Supreme Court -most informed people believed SCOTUS took the case on as a way to run out the clock until after the election so as to ensure his chances for victory. Almost no one believed that they -even they! -would actually give him what he asked for, because there was no Constitutional basis whatsoever to do so.

Joke’s on us.

Mere days before the 4^th of July, the conservative Court majority ruled -from whole cloth, with no connection to precedent, not that that’s stopped them recently -that no president can be prosecuted for things he (or she, someday) did as “official actions” while in office. Accept bribes, order execution of political rivals, inspire insurrections to remain in office… all immune, if said president said they were doing it for the country. But wait, says the suddenly-sensitive-to-criticism Chief Justice Roberts, we’re not saying the president is above the law- he can still be prosecuted for UNOFFICIAL actions. But the Court gives no suggestion as to what those might be. And, even worse, this Court ruled that -even if a president’s unofficial actions were criminal -no court can use as evidence of that criminality anything that president said to any of his subordinates.

In short, they have declared Donald Trump, if elected in November, King.

I say they have declared TRUMP king. Because, with the hyper-partisan-to-the-max track record of this Court, you know -you KNOW -that if Biden, or any other Democratic president, were charged with anything they would rule it prosecutable without even deliberating it. Because these actions are not about the office of president, or the good of the country. They are to protect the agenda of Donald Trump, like everything else these conservative Justices, and virtually all Republican officials, do anymore.

This is an ex-president who makes no secret about the fascistic plans he has for this country if he gets the chance, nor of his plans for political revenge against all perceived enemies. The dictatorial “Project 2025” plan details strategies to remove all governmental guardrails that prevented Trump from doing everything he wanted the first time around, and now SCOTUS has pre-approved his every illegal intention. And, assuming our democracy survives an even more deranged second Trump term, what about the future? This Court has enabled the possibility of everything the framers of the Constitution feared and warned about.

We are living in an age when one portion of the American public, and the politicians who rely on their votes, and (as we’ve been learning) the Justices grown accustomed to millions of dollars in bribes, are willing to burn down everything this country was founded on, every hope of generations to form a more perfect union… because it hasn’t gone the way they’d like it to go. “Oh, but people and their pronouns! And drag queens! And minorities! Someone needs to take a firm hand to fix all this!” Constitution be hanged, despite their claims to revere it. For that matter, Christ and morality be hanged, despite their claims of religion.

I’m not going to get through to people who think this is all hunky dory. But there are still plenty of people, right here in White County, who know it isn’t right. Stand up and speak, and get out and vote. It’s only a Republic if you can keep it.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE