Nixon's Revenge ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️

Tricky Dick’s Ghost:  Over the weekend Trump whose bestie Roger Stone has a large tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, circulated Truth Social posts calling for military tribunals to try his “enemies” and for the jailing of President Biden, VP Harris, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff, Adam Kinzinger, among others.  On Monday, in a 6 to 3 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts SCOTUS told him they were cool with that because as far as they’re concerned, contrary to our founders’ intent, presidents are mostly kings and therefore get to do just about everything they want, and the stuff that they’re not supposed to do, they probably get to do that too by merely saying that it’s part of their presidential duties. Up until Monday’s decision was released, the collective thought of the legal pundit community was that the immunity decision had been delayed so long because a few of the conservative Justices were stalling for time, wordsmithing dissents, to make it impossible for Trump’s trials to take place before the election.  The expectation had been that the majority’s opinion would grant presidents some immunity for official actions but only those actions that fell well within the scope of legitimate presidential duties. Turns out that the legal pundits were delusional.  This Court, which includes five Justices, Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch,  who honed their skills pushing the presidential power envelope for Republican presidents and one, Coney-Barrett who is mostly willing to go along for the ride, are the ones helming the ship. It’s the three liberal Justices and the remaining shreds of our democracy that are barely clinging to life preservers in a very turbulent sea.  In the minority’s dissent Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority’s opinion has “no basis in law” and “makes a mockery of the principle that no one is above the law.” She ended by saying that with “fear for our democracy” she dissents. Not willing to let those hysterical women have the last word, Chief Justice Roberts said that the girls were just overreacting, that anointing Trump was nothing to get so upset about because really, who thinks that Trump who is running on a platform of retribution, promising to be a dictator on day one, calling for military tribunals and the like really intends to do what he repeatedly says he plans to do.

The Decision: In a nutshell, the Court’s majority ruled that immunity for former presidents including the Orange dictator wannabee, is absolute with respect to “core presidential powers” and that a former president has at least a presumptive immunity for “acts within the outer perimeter of his (or her if we ever get there) official responsibility.  The kicker is that SCOTUS considers that perimeter to be rather large and prosecutors like Jack Smith, who in an earlier chapter of the Trump chronicles was supposed to save us from Trump’s resurgence, have a high legal bar to overcome that presumption.  Former presidents have no immunity for their unofficial acts but with the exception of Justice Coney Barrett, the majority ruled that a president’s official acts can’t be presented to a jury as evidence of a crime even if that crime involved an unofficial act.  The Court opined that since talking with the Department of Justice was within Trump’s official acts, he was absolutely immune when he directed the Attorney General to say there had been lots of election fraud even though there wasn’t. They also said that he was “presumptively” immune with regard to his conversations with then VP Mike Pence, the ones where he pushed Pence to refuse to certify the electoral college vote. The Court said that it’s up to the lower courts to hear evidence and then rule on which bucket presidential acts fall into, leaving them to figure out, for example, whether pressuring Pence to upturn the election was beyond the presidential pale but while doing that the lower court is not to consider motives because why should it matter that Trump’s motive was to remain in office for at least another term if not for the rest of his life? Though the fake state elector scheme is likely still a prosecutable crime, proving Trump’s involvement will be difficult and even more time consuming as a result of the Court’s ruling.  Presumably, Trump’s Mar a Lago document-whack a mole case is still alive too except we all know that Judge Aileen loose Cannon, who has already moved that case well into snail territory will find more reasons to slow it down. Trump celebrated the Court’s decision by having his lawyers request that his New York hush money case sentencing be postponed while they argue that his conviction should be thrown out as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision perhaps because writing checks to reimburse Michael Cohen for his payments to Stormy Daniels while he was in the Oval office is evidence that shouldn’t have been used in New York because he wrote those checks while simultaneously doing presidential things?  For what it’s worth, the same pundits who said that SCOTUS would never grant Trump so much immunity now say that NY Judge Juan Merchan, who has agreed to delay sentencing until September 18, will not throw out the conviction. They may be right, but Trump will be able to argue that point when he appeals his hush money conviction to higher courts.  For his part President Biden took advantage of the moment by making some coherent televised remarks where he condemned the Court’s opinion and showed that he now understands the value of stage make-up.

Fog:  As part of his proof of life campaign Biden will be sitting down for a one-on-one interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.  Some of the interview will be broadcast on Friday during the ABC evening news, the extended interview will be shown on Stephanopoulos’ Sunday news show.  According to Vanity Fair, RFK Jr, the brainworm, anti-vaxx candidate ate a dog and sexually assaulted one of his children’s nannies.  He responded by denying the dog allegation while shrugging when asked about the nanny assault.  The article also details the origins of RFK anti-vaxx position, as well as how he used his fame to convince residents of Samoa not to get the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.. More than 80 children whose parents took his advice, subsequently died during a measles epidemic. So maybe Trump, who during the debate once again denied having sex with Stormy Daniels, is still considering RFK to be his VP, or better yet, Secretary of Health or head of the CDC? Sadly, the mother of Noa Argamani, one of the Israeli hostages rescued last month, has died after suffering a long battle with brain cancer. Her dying wish had been to see her daughter again before her death. Thankfully, no thanks to Hamas, she did. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow         

Happy Fourth of July!