The former president has made clear once again that he believes the office should have absolute power
The D.C. Federal Court of Appeals is expected to hand down a decision on Donald Trump’s claim to “absolute” presidential immunity any day now, and the former president is upping his public pressure campaign for a favorable decision.
Early Thursday morning, Trump took to Truth Social to rant about the exemption he believes a president — or former president — should have from prosecution over crimes committed while in office. “EVEN EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’ MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD,” Trump wrote.
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The former president argued that without total blanket immunity, the chief executive would be stripped of the “authority and decisiveness” necessary to carry out their duties in office. “Sometimes you just have to live with ‘great but slightly imperfect,’” he wrote in the all-caps post.
I don’t understand how this is even in play. I thought the point of immunity was to prevent active members of government being arrested or prevented from doing their duty by minor or spurious charges while in office. The example was a congressman being pulled over on his way to an important vote. Trump doesn’t have any duties anymore. The nation doesn’t give a shit if he’s in court or prison or whatever, so why should he be immune to anything? Now seems the perfect time to find out exactly what he’s done.
Me neither. Even active presidents only have immunity in very limited circumstances. 30-40 years ago this claim would have been brushed off immediately as utterly ridiculous. That anybody would spend 1 second considering this as a real claim shows how our legal system has degenerated.
Nope. This has never been tested in the courts. And here we are.
This is literally why Johnson pardoned Nixon.
So it wouldn’t get to this point.
I’m not saying Trump should be pardoned, of course. He should be tried & spend the rest of his life on house arrest in a military barracks.
Johnson did not pardon Nixon
He doesn’t have a lot of other directions to go. He can just ignore paying people money for all the cases hes lost so far, but he can’t ignore getting sent to prison. He’s got to play this hand to delay and try to get back in office. Self-pardons, lock up his accusers and anyone else he sees as a threat. Turn the presidency into an actual dictatorship.
He was quoted many times saying how he liked how Putin and Kim and UN had their absolute power lined up.