Like millions of Americans who listened to oral arguments in the Supreme Court yesterday on the issue of presidential immunity, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said he was stunned that most of the right-wing justices seemed to believe that a president may have total immunity from criminal acts and therefore can act like a dictator and face no consequences.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out,” Raskin was asked by host Joy Reid about how blatantly partisan the six conservative justices sounded as they questioned attorneys for Special Counsel Jack Smith and former president Donald Trump, HuffPost reports.
“Well, they’re politicians who are not even subject to popular election unlike me,” Raskin replied. “They should move the Supreme Court over to the RNC headquarters because they’re acting like a bunch of partisan operatives.”
Focusing on a question from Justice Samuel Alito suggesting that democracy itself could be endangered if a president isn’t allowed to do anything he wants, no matter whether it’s legal or illegal, Raskin noted, “I mean, for all of American history, we’ve said presidents are subject to criminal prosecution if they commit crimes.”
“Now they say, ‘Well, if you’re really mean to Donald Trump and you hold him accountable the way every other American citizen is accountable, then he’ll really overthrow the government, he’ll really bring out the big guns and we can’t afford that.’ And that’s a kind of masochistic, capitulationism to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism.”
The Founding Fathers rebelled against England and King George III in large part because they were disgusted by the idea that one man could be above the law and rule by fiat and whim. It’s why they declared their independence and formed the United States of America.
Now, however, it appears that some on the Supreme Court are ready to give that same dictatorial power to a American head of state. Jefferson, Madison, and Washington must be spinning in their graves.
