Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. said Monday on MSNBC’s “José Díaz-Balart Reports” that the Supreme Court ruling in Donald Trump’s presidential immunity case made the imperial presidency concrete.
Guest host Katy Tur said, “Alexander Hamilton wrote that former presidents would be, ‘Liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.’ That’s Federalist paper number 69. page 452. For him, that was an importance distinction between the king of Britain and the President of the United States who would be amenable to person punishment and disgrace. I mean, if you’re going to say that you believe in historical precedent, how much clearer does it get than Alexander Hamilton saying ‘Liable to prosecution and punishment than the ordinary course of law?’ We fought a revolutionary war to break free from the Kingdom of England and the absolute rule of a king or queen to make our own democracy one in which everybody is treated the same, equally, obviously not great for a long time, but equally in theory, under the law.”
Glaude said, “History only matters when it serves their end. That’s what it seems to me. What I read from this, not as a technical person, a lawyer or anything, now the imperial presidency is now made concrete. It’s not about who’s in office, about their temperament, their disposition. The imperial presidency is now concretely here.”
He added, “And so just for me, just as historically, Katy, what would it mean now for Nixon to have lived under this ruling? What we have even had Watergate is the question? Donald Trump has always had around him those supportive of him and of the imperial presidency and that line blurred over and over. You saw it with Bill Barr. Now the imperial presidency is substantiated along with the imperial court. Here we are.”
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