HOW COLIN POWELL GOT AWAY WITH A DIG AT TRUMP
As a distinguished soldier-statesman, Colin Powell — a former secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national security adviser — is entitled to a great deal of deference to his expertise and gratitude for his service. Powell, like retired generals Jim Mattis, John Allen and John F. Kelly, and indeed all who have faced death to protect the U.S. Constitution, are owed continual, unbroken respect. They have mine.
But Powell is not entitled to his own definition of the Constitution. The document is public, as are the Supreme Court’s rulings on what it commands and what it does not. Powell lurched into absurdity on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, alleging that “the president has drifted away from” the Constitution.
Host Jake Tapper ought to have asked Powell how, exactly, President Donald Trump has “drifted away” from the Constitution. It is a serious charge. If Powell had been even slightly pressed, either evasion or silence almost certainly would have followed.
The Constitution contains no secret provisions on presidential Twitter use, no gnostic directions about what a commander in chief ought not to say. Exactly what was Powell referring to?
In truth, the Democrats have embraced a number of anti-constitutional positions. Many among them want to abolish the Electoral College, one of the two load-bearing walls on which the Constitution is built. The other — equal representation in the Senate of every state — is regularly assailed by the left.
Trump has “drifted” from the Constitution? No, Gen. Powell, it is the Democrats who seem increasingly happy to leave it behind.
The president, faced with anti-federalist demands that he seize unilateral command of the pandemic response, patiently defended the power that lies with state governors, as the Framers envisioned. When widespread violence, spawned by protests over what seems to me to be the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody, threatened to overmatch police departments, Trump raised the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act and sending the military to end the destruction. But he did not — instead urging governors to call out their National Guard troops and restore order.
Trump’s description of some of the governors as “weak” in a recent conference call, his blunt and uncompromising rhetoric in public remarks and his walk to St. John’s Church near the White House have offended the sensibilities of Democrats and their media allies, but not the Constitution.
Trump has not “drifted” from the Constitution. Beltway elites have. That’s why they remained silent (unless they were cheering) when the FBI launched a blatantly unconstitutional attack on the 2016 presidential election. If Colin Powell, or any of the other former generals criticizing Trump lately, has condemned the actions of former FBI director James B. Comey, his deputy, Andrew McCabe, or others, I missed it.
The generals’ outrage is awfully selective, and it definitely is not directed at the astonishing, anti-democratic efforts of a gang that didn’t like the results of the 2016 election. But they enjoy the freedom to publicly and selectively criticize, thanks to the First Amendment.
Powell made an incendiary charge on Sunday. That it passed unchallenged by the elite media says nothing about Trump’s fidelity to the Constitution but speaks volumes about elites’ ignorance of or disdain for the fundamental law of the United States.