“I disagree!”
President Joe Biden was offering a dramatic, direct response to a landmark Supreme Court ruling that could give presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump a ticket to unfettered power if he wins a second term.
But Biden’s challenge also conveyed a poignant image of a president who refuses to be sidelined from the biggest political stage after a disastrous debate performance revealed the ravages of age.
Biden appeared on Monday night (1) in the majestic environment of the transverse corridor, just at the entrance to the White House, with the presidential seal behind him and marble pillars on each side. But his argument – that presidents are not kings – was the opposite of royal. Biden said the high court’s ruling on Trump’s sweeping claim to be protected from prosecution for his attempt to steal the 2020 election — concluding that presidents are immune from official acts — was dangerous and unprecedented.
“Now the American people will have to do what the court should have been willing to do and didn’t do: Americans will have to pass judgment on Donald Trump’s behavior,” Biden said.
His speech was both an important moment in the institutional history of the presidency and a calculated political move – the first step back after a horrible and humiliating weekend filled with calls for him to abandon his presidential campaign.
In four minutes, Biden, 81, summarized the two increasingly serious and urgent choices voters faced in November.
— Will the country once again turn to a 78-year-old former president with authoritarian instincts who believes that the Constitution gives him absolute power?
— And does Biden, slowed by the inexorable march of time and facing an existential personal political crisis, have the strength to be the last barrier to Trump’s autocratic ambitions?
Biden’s first recovery attempt
The president’s appearance on Monday night came after he returned from Camp David, where he had been staying since Saturday, surrounded by family and beset by speculation about his political future. Biden is primed for polls that will show whether his already difficult path to re-election has been further compromised by his hard-to-follow struggles on the debate stage.
As a piece of political theater, the speech did nothing to allay concerns about Biden’s health, mental capacity and age, raised by a painful appearance at the presidential debate. CNN in Atlanta on Thursday (27), when it sometimes seemed vague and occasionally incoherent. Whether it was because of the environment or a different kind of makeup on television, he looked tanned and rested on Monday rather than pale and aged as he did at the debate. But even though he read it from a teleprompter, the president’s words were rushed, as sometimes happens with older people.
And when he finished, the president ignored questions from the press. His delicate – almost staggering – walk back to the Blue Room highlighted the loss of mobility that only reminds voters of his advanced age. Biden will require a greater volume and pace of public events and a level of energy and engagement week after week to try to dispel the frightening images of an open-mouthed and seemingly confused president at last week’s debate.
However, the energetic quality of Biden’s intervention and the content of his words in the speech left no doubt about his convictions – even in circumstances much more manageable than a debate against the fierce Trump. Monday’s appearance was a classic example of how to use the imagery and rhetoric of the presidency.
The court concluded that for “primary” presidential activity, Trump has the absolute immunity he sought from a lawsuit stemming from his 2020 federal election interference case. The conservative majority said Trump’s conversations with the Justice Department, the efforts to try to get authorities to join in his drive to overturn the election, were covered with absolute immunity – a factor that critics say could offer him an opening to use the department to seek reprisals against his personal enemies if he wins. another mandate.
For other official actions and more routine powers held by the president, the court said there is at least some immunity and largely deferred the scope decision to lower courts.
But Biden defended the presidency within the confines of a constitutional system designed to contain executive power, not unleash it. The irony of a president warning that the power of his own office must be circumscribed was consistent with the positions of all but a few U.S. presidents, who understood that the integrity of the public trust they held and American democracy depended on its restraint.
Biden invoked George Washington, the first president, who established the tradition of ceding power voluntarily and peacefully, which Trump abused four years ago, to argue that executive power is “limited and not absolute.” Presidential speeches don’t have to be long to resonate.
“The American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s attack on our democracy on January 6th makes him unfit for public office in the highest office in the land,” Biden said. “The American people must decide (whether) Trump’s embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable. Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide whether they want to entrust the… presidency… once again… to… Donald Trump, now knowing that he will have more courage to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.”
Trump rages over the ‘stink’ of Biden’s ‘hoaxes’
Biden’s measured reaction to the Supreme Court ruling contrasted with his predecessor’s triumphant outburst.
“THE SUPREME COURT’S DECISION IS MUCH MORE POWERFUL THAN SOME EXPECTED. IT IS BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE, AND CLEARS THE STINK OF BIDEN’S TRIALS AND FARCES, ALL OF THEM, WHICH WERE USED AS AN UNFAIR ATTACK ON JOE BIDEN’S POLITICAL OPPONENT, ME,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform. . “MANY OF THESE FALSE CASES WILL NOW DISAPPEAR OR wither into obscurity. GOD BLESS THE AMERICA!”
Trump’s capital letters, self-obsession and false claims that he is a victim of politicized justice have only reinforced Biden’s arguments about the dangers he could pose to democracy. But Trump’s skill as a demagogue has convinced many of his supporters that Biden, not the former president who refused to accept the outcome of an election, is the real threat to democracy.
Trump never hid what he would do with the strengthening of executive power. After all, he called for the extinction of the Constitution in a post on social media. During the 2020 pandemic, Trump falsely declared: “When someone is President of the United States, the authority is total and that is how it should be.” In his social media campaign, apparently aimed at influencing the conservative majority on the Supreme Court before the trial, the former president repeatedly said that without immunity for all acts, the presidency could not function. And he left no doubt that he would use a second term to seek personal revenge.
These statements take on new meaning given Monday’s ruling.
“This wasn’t the grand slam that Trump was looking for, but it was very close,” said former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a senior law enforcement analyst at the FBI. CNNto CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” on Monday.
“The definition of immunity is so broad…that, with the addition of eliminating the use of any official conduct as evidence in a charge targeting unofficial conduct, it really creates a minuscule area of prosecution for any president or former president.”
This reality appears to give Trump even greater freedom for his expansive interpretation of presidential powers if he wins in November — a factor Biden is imploring voters to consider. He directed Americans to the views of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who issued a scathing dissent against the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling.
“I agree with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent today. Here’s what she said… ‘In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. Afraid for our democracy, I disagree”, end of quote. The same should happen to the American people.”
“I disagree,” Biden said.
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