“'I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act,' lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm defends democratic election laws, wrote today on social media. He added: 'I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.'”
"The argument was oddly devoid of mention of the former president by name. Usually, an oral argument focuses on a defendant and his conduct. Not so here. This was all about future presidents and how they would execute their constitutional duties. The six conservative Justices left Donald Trump on the periphery for the most part…"
"Every time Dreeben brought up one of the charges against Trump, the conservatives on the court didn’t want to hear it, or they sought to defenestrate the laws by implying that they were weak, that they didn’t apply to the circumstances surrounding January 6."
"Based on oral argument in the presidential immunity case, the Court’s conservative justices seem prepared to effectively reward Trump for January 6th. …
[L]arge swaths of presidential action that were unimaginable before Trump could become not just real but protected."
"The reactionary majority gave Trump a victory by dignifying ludicrous arguments that should have been rebuked and condemned the moment Trump's counsel gave them voice. In failing to reject those arguments out of hand, the reactionary majority bestowed upon them the veneer of legitimacy and respectability they do not deserve."
"Yesterday’s oral argument before the Supreme Court about Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for inciting an insurrection was a farce and a ruse. …
The case before the justices is whether inciting an insurrection is a prosecutable offense. Of course it is. By blowing it up into something else, the Republican justices are blowing up Trump’s trial — which is exactly their intention."
“Today’s GOP controlled Supreme Court is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party focused on imposing their right-wing agenda upon us--from ending fundamental rights like abortion and marriage equality to undermining voting rights and more.”
“They’re expanding the president’s power in response to January 6th, the horrors of that day. That is producing, not constraints on a president’s power, but enhancement of a president’s power to do things without any accountability.”
“When…Alito, the most villainous political figure in my lifetime, asserted without any irony that prosecuting a president for refusing to relinquish power after losing an election might encourage future presidents to hold on even more firmly to their office, any remaining optimism I could muster about American democracy and its institutional ability to defend itself against tyranny drained away.”
“I don’t say that lightly or for effect, and I don’t want to make my personal feelings the point here. But when I woke up this morning and saw the news coverage writ large, it didn’t reflect what happened yesterday. We slid over the edge of a cliff, and we won’t stop now until we hit bottom.”
“On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States, the Republican-appointed justices shattered [the illusions that the Supremes would protect democracy]. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so.”
“These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act.”
“The conservative judges, or at least most of them, on the highest court in the land are very clearly choosing Trump over our institutions. And none more belligerently than Samuel Alito. … The conservative jurists chose Trump. It will stand as one of the blackest days in Supreme Court history.”
As Jonathan V. Last says, Trump is the great revealer. For years, conservatives claimed they were all about the Constitution as written, the rule of law, the judiciary not legislating.
Turns out – with the Supreme Court leading the way – that this was all a big lie. The Supremes are a charade, and corrupt to the hilt, the right-wing bloc controlling the court. (Those are my words, not Last's.)
"The notion that Donald Trump’s supporters believe that he should be able to overthrow the government and get away with it sounds like hyperbole, an absurd and uncharitable caricature of conservative thought. Except that is exactly what Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer argued before the Supreme Court yesterday, taking the position that former presidents have 'absolute immunity' for so-called official acts they take in office."
"The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party and to an ambiguous degree right-wing anti-regulatory ideology. If we believe in a different set of policies or even democratic self-governance we will have to succeed at that with the Supreme Court acting as a consistent adversary."
"Trump hasn’t just captured the trenches of conservative America, he has taken the commanding heights. He owns all of it, from the most racist backwater saloon to the Federalist Society clubhouse. They are his corrupted subjects. He is their corrupt and demented king. If he can somehow get through the next few perilous months, he may yet render corruption sacred, and the republic irredeemable."
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