WILL TRUMP’S CLAIMS OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER BE STRUCK DOWN BY THE HIGH COURT?

…The real view of THE DONALD!

Will Trump follow his lawyers and end up like Richard Nixon?

Before our current president left on Air Force One for the G7 meeting, he left us with his usual collection of presidential whoppers.

First, he asked why wasn’t Russia included in the G7 meeting.  He stated that Russia should be at the G7 meeting like back when it was the G8.  The president seems to forget, or since he doesn’t read, he probably didn’t know that Russia was thrown out of the G8 after Putin illegally annexed Crimea. 

Next The president said that he was considering pardoning the case against Muhammed Ali.  Once again, the president showed a lack of doing his homework.  Ali’s case was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1971.

But he didn’t stop there.  When he was asked about what appeared to be his lack of preparation for the up-coming meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Trump answered that he had been, “Preparing for that meeting all of his life”.

Really Mr. President?  Do you mean you were preparing for that meeting when you appeared in a soft-pornographic movie back in the 1990’s?  Or was it back when you called all those New York radio stations and you pretended to be your own PR agent that you called “John Miller, as you told the stations how great a lover Donald J. Trump was?

It’s continually appearing that our very ignorant, liar-in-chief, just can’t stop from opening his mouth, and inserting his foot.

This is all so embarrassing as the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Jon Meacham, has since reminded us that the great US President, FDR, always said that despite all of this country’s failings, the trend of American civilization is forever in an upward direction.

Unfortunately, with a current president that proclaims his power is unrestrained by all the traditional democratic checks and balances; a president that has actually stated that he can ignore federal subpoenas; that he has the power to kill any Justice Department investigation; and that he could obstruct justice in order to protect his personal interests, and doing this while then pardoning himself.

That twisted interpretation of presidential authority is dead wrong. Even in President Trump’s America, no man is above the law.

The president’s lawyers have apparently convinced Donald Trump, as did Richard Nixon’s lawyers, “that when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

The 50^th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination has now served as a stark reminder of what American politics might have become had the New York senator survived his shooting.

As compared to our inappropriate chief executive, Robert Kennedy’s election to the presidency could have healed a nation that was pushed to a breaking point by the then many cultural conflicts.

During his time, when he was campaigning against the bleak backdrop of the War in Vietnam; the torching of American cities; the heightened racial ­tensions in the nation and the political assassination of MLK; RFK could possibly have stitched together the shredded fabric of American culture and perhaps healed the soul of the country.

That is the total opposite of what this country is having to deal with today, and much of its problems can be laid at the door step of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

To those unsettled by the commander in chief’s autocratic impulses, it may come that this president will likely face the same fate as Richard Nixon if he acts upon his lawyers’ ignorant legal opinions.

History does, in fact, show that a president cannot pardon himself. In the days before Nixon resigned in 1974, the Justice Department issued an opinion that echoed centuries of American and English law by declaring, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the president cannot pardon himself.“

The history of Bill Clinton’s presidency also undermines recent claims from Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that Trump is legally entitled as president to ignore a subpoena from the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

However, do not take my word for it. Read Giuliani’s own words from 1998. “You gotta do it. I mean, you don’t have a choice,” the former US attorney said that about Clinton’s legal options if he received a federal subpoena to testify to Whitewater investigators.

What Time magazine describes as the White House’s “increasingly broad claims of presidential impunity” would likely be struck down in a unanimous opinion by the Supreme Court.

And even Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill would never suggest, as Giuliani has done, that Trump could have murdered former FBI director James Comey and escape indictment as long as he was in office. 

Other claims of presidential authority by Trump and his lawyers are so stupid that they require little comment by me.

Even the House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) defended the FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign as he told reporters that no man is above the law.

Ryan’s performance may have met only the bare-minimum standard for political courage.

I don’t know how it will happen, but I do personally believe that this president’s worst actions will eventually be checked.  In addition, that our country’s rule of law will be preserved and that the words that FDR once spoke of will again be spoken.

At least I sure hope so.

Copyright G.Ater 2018