When he’s not feuding with Taylor Swift or claiming to look like Elvis Presley, Donald Trump spends most of his days raging about how numerous authorities officers—usually prosecutors however typically additionally former presidents and his own Cabinet members—have wronged him. However on Monday, he was stuffed with reward for 9 DC regulars, i.e. the Supreme Court docket, for ruling that states can’t take away him from the poll regardless of the coup that he tried simply over three years in the past.
Talking from Mar-a-Lago after the choice got here down, Trump commended the justices for working “lengthy,” “onerous,” and “in a short time on one thing that can be spoken about 100 years from now and 200 years from now, [something] extraordinarily vital.” Later, referring to the unanimous determination, he stated he was “very honored by a nine-to-nothing vote.” Not solely did the Court docket enable Trump to stay on the poll in Colorado, which had disqualified him, however 5 members of the bulk ensured will probably be very troublesome to forestall different would-be insurrectionists from operating for president sooner or later.
Per The Washington Post:
Of their concurring opinion, justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the bulk for “try[ing] to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding workplace.” Even conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed, however didn’t be a part of the liberals’ opinion as a result of she didn’t like their tone. (She individually commented that the go well with the Court docket was being requested to weigh in on “didn’t require us to handle the difficult query of whether or not federal laws is the unique automobile via which Part 3 will be enforced.”)
Monday’s ruling was, in fact, not the one one the Supreme Court docket is predicted to make this time period that issues Trump and, mainly, the destiny of democracy. Subsequent month, it can hear arguments in regards to the former man’s claims of immunity, which he hopes will outcome within the justices agreeing that presidents can’t be held accountable for their actions. As he has claimed prior to now, Trump wrote on Fact Social at present that except presidents have whole immunity from the regulation each whereas in workplace and after, they “will all the time be involved, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation, after they depart workplace. This might truly result in extortion and blackmail of a President.… A President should be free to make correct selections. His thoughts should be clear, and he should not be guided by concern of retribution!”
Whereas it could be really stunning—and seemingly unlikely—for the Court docket to aspect with Trump’s absurd immunity claims, as my colleague Eric Lutz famous final month, the justices have already given the ex-president a win by (1) agreeing to listen to the case and (2) scheduling arguments for late April, which can delay his federal election-subversion case till who is aware of when. So the one query now’s how massive of a present they need to give him subsequent.
