“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 4th 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
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
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