One of the arguments I still hear in favor of voting for Donald Trump this November is that we don’t have to worry about the crazier promises he is making about how he will use and abuse his authority, because there are constitutional guardrails in place that will limit his power.
I know the “guardrails” argument. I’ve made the guardrails argument. In elections where we have to choose the lesser of two evils—which, let’s face it, is all of them—this is a useful caution against catastrophism. It assures us that it is not a disaster to vote for a candidate who has significant bad policies in his agenda, because no president manages to achieve his entire agenda and few manage to achieve much of it.
Yet this argument is not well suited for our current times and especially for Donald Trump, because he has spent his short but tumultuous career in politics careening into all the guardrails against the abuse of power—and knocking many of them down.
In the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, the conservative majority knocked down another big one on his behalf.
The Fake Electors Scheme
First, let’s consider the case in which this question arises. Trump has been indicted by a federal prosecutor for his role in a plot to substitute fake electors for the ones chosen by voters, thereby changing the result of the 2020 Electoral College vote and staying in office for a second term in defiance of the voters.
The scope of this plot is important to grasp. When we talk about Donald Trump engaging in “insurrection” and attempting to overthrow the federal government, we are not just talking about the riot at the US Capitol on January 6. That was one part of a larger scheme Trump personally orchestrated over a period of months.
The Court’s majority opinion accurately lays out the nature of the charges.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Tracinski Letter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.