Above the law: Trump’s desperate appeal

Donald Trump doesn’t want to be president again— he wants to be “king,” said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. In an all-caps “rant” on his Truth Social platform sent out at 1 a.m. last week, Trump tried to justify his legal defense against dozens of felony charges by insisting that all presidents need blanket criminal immunity to function. “Even events that ‘cross the line,’” Trump argued, “must fall under total immunity, or it will be years of trauma trying to determine good from bad” after that president leaves office. Trump, of course, is the first former president to be indicted—not once, but four times. In his revealing rant, Trump said neither a “rogue cop” nor president can do their job if they face prosecution for doing “something illegal.” Sounds like an admission of guilt. But make no mistake: Trump is giving us “a literal prescription for strongman-style dictatorship” in which America’s ruler is not bound by the rule of law. Imagine “what four more years of him might look like.”

Trump’s claim to unchecked power is “wildly, profoundly, fundamentally un-American, unconstitutional, and—therefore—unconservative,” said Jonah Goldberg in The Dispatch. But instead of denunciations, Republican elected officials have reacted with…crickets. At a recent hearing on Trump’s immunity claim in a Washington, D.C., appeals court, said Zachary B. Wolf in CNN.com, the judges “all seemed extremely skeptical.” No wonder: When a judge asked whether a president would be immune to prosecution if he ordered “SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival,” Trump’s attorney said yes, unless Congress first impeached him and removed him from office.

This “preposterous” position is just a “stalling technique,” said Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. Trump is likely to appeal his immunity claim all the way to the Supreme Court, hoping to push his Jan. 6 trial from its scheduled March date to beyond the November election. He has reason to stall: Special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election gets stronger by the day. Smith reportedly has obtained Trump’s phone records from Jan. 6, indicating whom he spoke to and when. Trump aide Dan Scavino told Smith’s team that Trump replied “So what?” when told Vice President Mike Pence was in danger. That’s strong evidence of Trump’s criminal “intent” to use the riot to stop the electoral vote count—assuming that presidents are still bound by the rule of law.