Somewhere on your Trump lawyer scorecard, you will find the name John Sauer. In the latest bit of outrageous Trump lawyering, John Sauer stood before an appellate court on behalf of Donald Trump to make a case for extrajudicial assassination by a President. Yes, it sounds like something John Larroquette might argue on an episode of Night Court. Instead, this happened in a district appeals court. When asked by Judge Florence Yu Pan if a president could order the assassination of a political rival as part of his official duties, Sauer tried to legalese his answer, but in a nutshell, he said yes. Mr. Sauer offered to Judge Pan that unless a president was impeached, convicted, and booted out of office; they could kill you, me, or anyone they liked with no consequence. Essentially, Sauer manufactured a model in direct contrast to the precedent that George Washington set—the President is not a king.
Americans should not be surprised that it has come to this point. Former Attorney General Bill Barr courted Mr. Trump with his long-held theory of Executive supremacy, not to be blunted by the Judiciary or Legislative branches of government. Mr. Trump has said that the President has unlimited power, stating Article II of the Constitution “allows me to do whatever I want.” In 2020, Trump stated, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,”Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social as part of his long-running paranoid delusion about a fixed election.
Snowflakes
We hear gobbledygook from Republicans when speaking of Trump, like, do not take him literally but seriously. It was just a joke. Do not be a snowflake. The Republican party has become a frayed sweater, with its supporters pulling and tugging at what holds it together until the whole thing unravels. Then, childlike, the party leaders hide their hands, close their eyes, and claim innocence. The journey to normalization has made the absurd not just acceptable but dangerous. Mr. Trump has taken rally stages threatening his version of weaponization of government by promising retribution, making jokes about the man who nearly killed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer. He and his allies are already using all the tools available to him and them to plan an Executive takeover if he reassumes power.
Mr. Trump has, on more than one occasion, publicly envied dictators who kill their citizens. In a 2017 call to former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, he extolled the virtuousness of Duterte murdering drug dealers on the streets without due process. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” said Trump. “Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing, and I just wanted to call and tell you that,” Trump told him in a call from the White House. Then there was his infamous Pee-wee Herman-like answer (I know you are, but what am I) to a question from Bill O’Reilly when O’Reilly condemned the murderous Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “There are a lot of killers. We got a lot of killers,” said Trump. “What, you think our country is so innocent?”he responded to the stunned O’Reilly.
Trump’s outrageous and idiotic ramblings have become normal with the help of the media. Thinking we had rid ourselves of his influence in 2020, he weaponized his followers into a full-scale insurrection. Now, we have our courts debating whether a potential murderer should be given the unfettered right to kill. I have been a vocal critic of Nikki Haley, but she slipped back into sanity for just a moment when asked about Trump’s lawyer’s assertion that murder would be okay as long as it was a president. “That’s Ridiculous!” she answered. Have we gone so far down into the Republican gutter that decency comes as a surprise?
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