"Complete and total presidential immunity."
What if Trump is right about something?
What if he is right about the most whacked-out thing he has ever said?
Donald Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social:
A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION. ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED, WOULD BE MET WITH ALMOST CERTAIN INDICTMENT BY THE OPPOSING PARTY AT TERM END. EVEN EVENTS THAT 'CROSS THE LINE' MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD. THERE MUST BE CERTAINTY.
He is getting more manic. He feels the high of crowd adulation and election victory. He feels the panic of the law closing in. Nikki Haley says it, "Chaos follows him." Of course it does. Trump is a disrupter, shaking up the courts, NATO, taxes, immigration, the federal work force, trade, the GOP, and norms surrounding elections. Chaos is the point. Trump's go-to response to an accusation is to accuse his opponents of the same thing, but worse. His teleprompter speeches added a word: "Bedlam." He repeats the word a dozen times in a single speech. Biden's economic bedlam, his foreign policy bedlam, the urban bedlam. It's a switch from "Sleepy Joe" -- its opposite -- and it's a poker "tell." Trump has become crazy Lear. Trump and his message team know it, so he is accusing Biden of it. Classic Trump.
Trump said the craziest thing of all. Immunity. A president could order the assassination of a political opponent and have immunity. Outrageous!
Tarry a moment. Sometimes even a broken clock is right.
Trump presumes bad faith. Following a term of office, partisans of the other party might -- indeed would -- set about prosecuting the former president. That, too, is a "tell," but it is no secret. Trump says openly and proudly that he would indeed enact retribution. He and his supporters would immediately begin punitive prosecutions. It is contrary to the American tradition of peaceful transfer but previous presidents felt constrained by rules, norms, laws, and opponents.
Not Trump. He would be elected because enough people want someone to break those restraints. Texas has already announced plans to take Biden off the Texas ballot under the 14th Amendment, saying Biden's border policies are tantamount to allowing a foreign invasion. Biden and the mainstream media would argue that the southern border is a political disagreement, not a crime. A border mess contrasts with a president-led fake-elector plot. But a partisan DA with a constituency that loathes Biden could make a criminal claim that Biden was an accessory to civic unrest. There may be some lingering Black-Code or Jim Crow-era laws on the books designed to criminalize "outside agitators" that could be read to claim criminality. Make Biden defend against 10 rural county DAs in each of 20 red states. Take that, Joe Biden!
I distinguish between a prosecution for actual crimes and an abusive, dishonest one. Not everyone would draw the same lines. Republicans are busy re-imagining January 6 and the fake elector plan, calling it a misunderstanding and exaggeration, not a crime. GOP leaders are saying that whatever Trump may have done at the transition should be mumbled about, not prosecuted.
Trump is negotiating. Give me immunity, he argues, so that Biden will get immunity, and he will need it.
I offer this as a heads-up to Democrats. Do not be entirely surprised if a nine-to-zero Supreme Court accepts some version of post-presidential immunity. Trump revealed a great weakness in the structure of American government, and the Supreme Court may feel it needs to repair it. Our republic assumed politicians would admit to facts and would feel shame. The founders recognized that a charismatic autocrat might arise who would not, but they expected others in the Congress and the states to isolate, impeach, and remove that person to protect themselves and the republic. The founders did not anticipate party discipline.
We may need a strong -- if not absolute -- plan of presidential immunity. The Supreme Court may discover it within the penumbras of the Constitution's text. This would be a good time for a unanimous court, not a partisan split. The justices will be thinking ahead to a new MAGA era. Without some kind of presidential immunity, we may get the prosecutorial bedlam we were promised.
Continuing with the Lear theme: I expect Trump to transfer as many NY assets as possible to Ivanka, his chosen daughter, since she'll be able to do biz in NY. How long she'll remain the chosen daughter thereafter will be interesting; nobody can possibly satisfy Trump for very long, even if he had had a hankerin' for them....
While the Jan 6 insurrection was happening, he was like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Now he's like Caligula.