Hours after the U.S. invaded Venezuela to seize President Nicolás Maduro, President Trump sent a warning to the governments of Mexico, Cuba and Colombia that their countries could be next.
Why it matters: The stunning attack on Caracas follows Trump’s recent assertion of his own version of the Monroe Doctrine, and the president’s comments that the U.S is not afraid to put “boots on the ground” in the country suggest that the administration won’t hesitate to have an ongoing presence in the region.
This is not true according to the Supreme Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States.
Once you accept that the highest court in the land is the one who decides which people are subject to the law, the path for accountability for Trump within the status quo of the system only has a single outlet: impeachment, conviction, and removal from office (followed by subsequent prosecution in the criminal system outside of Congress).
While impeachment has occurred (or been threatened) multiple times, nobody has ever convicted a president nor removed one from office in the country’s history. The “Dems” – who you are somewhat unjustly demonizing here given the current make-up of Congress – got the closest anyone has ever gotten to removing one in Trump’s second impeachment.
The status quo responded by saying “he’s close to out of office anyway, it doesn’t matter” and then allowed Trump’s propaganda machine to re-write history and turn the participants in the January 6th insurrection into pardoned, misunderstood heroes.
Inside the system (which you still think will save us), the “Dems” also attempted (though halfheartedly) to prosecute Trump after he was out of office, and this Supreme Court carve out for a sitting President was the reward for them trying to enforce the law under Biden.
The Democrats have plenty of blame to take here for the rise of Trump both generally speaking and in particular him being allowed to run for and win re-election. But they did much more than any single Republican has ever done to stop Trump.
I’d argue that Biden’s true mistake was not acting as Lula did and arresting Trump immediately upon entry to office.
I’ve said that from the moment Biden took office. He should have ordered all of them rounded up and sent to Gitmo for extended interrogation, then kept them locked up as national security threats. Any politician who amplified the Big Lie, should have been removed from office under 14A/S3. Those who helped organize and transport terrorist traitors to Jan 6, like Clarence Thomas’ bulldog wife, should have been prosecuted for sedition.
But Biden appointed the most ineffective Republican in history to go after MAGA, and he dithered and slow-walked it, and gave them a two year head start in running out the clock.
As for Trump’s supposed “immunity,” I think we’ll eventually discover that it isn’t as wide-reaching as many think, and especially as he thinks. SCOTUS said he has immunity for his official presidential duties, but that’s a serious limitation. His official presidential duties are defined in the Constitution, and subsequent case law, and he has immunity for THOSE actions. For instance, Obama can’t be prosecuted for murder for ordering drones strikes that were within his presidential duties, as many MAGAs have called for. That was an official presidential duty. But accepting airplanes for bribes, bombing foreign citizens in international waters, deporting innocent people to life sentences in torture prisons in third-party countries without due process, are not official presidential duties, outlined in the Constitution.
Most importantly, planning, promoting, and launching an Insurrection that violates the entire Constitution, and stealing hundreds of sensitive classified documents does NOT fall under anyone’s definition of “official presidential duties.”
Trump thinks it means he has full immunity for everything, because he mistakenly believes he is a King, but we have to disabuse him of that idea, harshly, ruthlessly, and mercilessly.
It’s not a big limitation for Republicans. They can simply make the argument to a sympathetic Supreme Court that the charged violation was part of his official presidential duties.
That’s the thing in general as well. “The law is the law” is a meaningless platitude. Humans interpret (and reinterpret) the law as they see fit. We also pick and choose which portions to enforce.
That all set aside:
(Emphasis mine)
“At least presumptive immunity” is another bit of legal worminess that makes whomever is president with a sympathetic make-up on the Supreme Court effectively a king with one exception reiterated throughout the opinion: impeachment, conviction, and removal.
Sure, there’s “unofficial acts”, but that is another bit of subjective non-sense that can be argued away before the trial even starts.
The idea that “the law applies to everyone” is not shared by our current Supreme Court. Despite Democrats being fairly useless and spineless, this part of the deconstruction of our country (along with the disastrous decision in Citizen’s United) belongs solely upon the shoulders of the gowned guys and gals of the Supreme Court. He acts with impunity because he can. He acts without fear of prosecution because his supplicants in Congress and the Supreme Court allow him to do so.