| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Lincoln, Nebraska at 6 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | |
| And pass president. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a kangaroo. | |
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join Political Playbook, Chief Correspondent, and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| Ceasefire this fall on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Our final guest of the morning, Kim Whaley of the University of Baltimore School of Law. | ||
| She's a professor there, an ABC News legal contributor, also the author of the book, How to Read the Constitution and Why. | ||
| Kim Whaley, welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Most recently, and I'll just give you the headline on the website Zatteo, that you write under the headline that the president's revealed a gaping hole in the Constitution. | ||
| Let's start with what that hole is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The hole is that so much of it is based on a handshake agreement and on deference to the branches of government other than the presidency. | |
| So we talk a lot about how Congress has the power of the purse, but the president has the checkbook. | ||
| So Congress has the power to declare war, but the president has the power over the military. | ||
| So really, the president is supposed to kind of circle back and follow the instructions of the other two branches of government, and that's worked for 238 years. | ||
| It's just sort of an understanding that even though there's not really an obvious way to enforce the powers of Congress as compared to the president, presidents prior to Donald Trump just did that because they understood that's what their obligation was under the law. | ||
| And particularly with this administration, the second Trump administration, he's just coming in and saying, I don't care. | ||
| I don't care what the law says. | ||
| I don't care what appropriations, you know, what Congress is, how Congress has told me to spend the money. | ||
| I don't care really that there's a due process clause and there are all these restraints. | ||
| I'm going to do what I want because actually I was given all this power as president. | ||
| So the hole in it is really, with the exception of impeachment, there isn't an obvious workable mechanism to force a president to abide by his oath of office and the restraints that the Constitution really imposes with the understanding that you just do it. | ||
| You do it as a good president, as a good citizen. | ||
| And, you know, this president was elected in part because he doesn't adhere to rules. | ||
| He smashes things and he's going ahead and doing that. | ||
| And many voters probably like that for him, that he does that. | ||
| But as a practical matter, it really means the erosion in serious, serious ways of the Constitution because there's no way for the Constitution to kind of grow arms and legs and enforce itself. | ||
| And Congress is standing down to a large degree, and the Supreme Court is standing down to a large degree in terms of enforcing the Constitution as against Donald Trump himself. | ||
| Is it because when it comes, say, to Congress, because both houses are controlled by Republicans, would you say that hole existed? | ||
| Or does the same exist when Democrats ruled the White House as well as both houses of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, the hole has always been there, is what I would argue. | |
| It's just that we've never been in this crisis inflection point because presidents just went along with what the law says. | ||
| You know, if a statute was enacted that creates an agency, for example, Department of Education or USAID, the presidents just followed the law of the statute that Congress created. | ||
| And if they wanted a different law, they'd go back to Congress and try to get supermajorities or majorities to get the legislation passed because they sort of operated under the understanding that they were bound by the law because they are. | ||
| This president is basically said, I don't care. | ||
| So that's really, I think, what's novel here is just his willingness to ignore the law and say, I'm going to do what I want. | ||
| Make me. | ||
| do it, make me comply with the law. | ||
| And then we, of course, I think, have, you know, we have both houses of Congress that are controlled by one party. | ||
| That's not new. | ||
| That's happened before. | ||
| But this Congress, this particular Republican Party also seems comfortable or willing at least with allowing the Constitution itself to go unenforced, including its own powers. | ||
| I mean, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, one of the founding fathers in Federalist 51, that the expectation was that pretty much everybody likes their power, right? | ||
| So Congress will push back on the president in ways because they want to keep their prerogative. | ||
| They want to make sure their appropriations power, their power of the purse, for example, stays alive and well, because people like to keep power. | ||
| But with this particular Congress, things have been happening that are really intruding on Congress's authority. | ||
| For example, closing agencies. | ||
| Presidents don't have a constitutional power to close an agency. | ||
| That's up to Congress because Congress makes the agency. | ||
| But this Congress is sitting back and saying, well, if it's Donald Trump, we're okay with it. | ||
| But then the problem with that is now that power is in the presidency period. | ||
| So whether it's Donald Trump or it's Kamala Harris or whoever it is in the future, that president now, because Congress has given up the power over money, that president's moving forward, there's a precedent now to just ignore the law and do whatever they want with agencies hiring and firing people regardless of what the law says, spending money they don't have or refusing to spend money that Congress said they should spend. | ||
| All of these things, it's almost like an example I use in the, I'm a mom, teenagers, the example I use in the piece is like, you know, if you give, you can give two teenagers a credit card and you can say to both of them, listen, this is for you to use in an emergency, but you've got to call me or text me before you use it to get my permission. | ||
| Don't buy a Starbucks without my advance permission. | ||
| One teenager will dutifully call mom and make sure mom is okay with it. | ||
| The next teenager will go out and buy her friends whatever they want and just deal with the consequences later. | ||
| Every president, I would argue, before Trump, with some rare exceptions in certain issues, is teenager number one, said, listen, we want to make sure Congress is okay with this. | ||
| We better go to Congress and try to get the votes to do what the White House wants to do. | ||
| This is teenager number two. | ||
| I'm going to use the credit card however I want, and I'm the one that has the police force. | ||
| I'm the one that has all the power. | ||
| So what are you going to do about it? | ||
| And I think right now, America in general is sort of frozen. | ||
| People are a little paralyzed, not knowing what to do with this particular teenager who's using the credit card however he wants and daring the other branches, daring protesters, daring media companies, daring universities, daring other people to stop him. | ||
| And the parents aren't home. | ||
| The parents are kind of checked out, really, in a lot of ways. | ||
| So we're seeing so much power concentrated not only in one office, but in one person. | ||
| And we've never seen that in this way before. | ||
| And that's why me and many others now, I mean, me for a long time, would say we're in a constitutional crisis, because the Constitution isn't really operating to constrain the actions in the White House to make sure they comply with the rule of law. | ||
| And I argue in the piece, it's because there's really an understanding up until now, you just do it. | ||
| You do it because that's the right thing to do when you take an oath to uphold the Constitution, meaning you follow the rules even if there's nobody to force you necessarily to follow the rules if you breach the rules. | ||
| Kim Whaley with us, and if you want to ask her questions about the topics related to the piece that we've been referencing, you can do so on the lines: 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and Independence 202-748-8002. | ||
| Text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Kim Whaley, how does the judiciary fit as far as the checks and balance systems are concerned related to this president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So, Congress makes the law. | ||
| The president is supposed to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. | ||
| Don't get to optionally ignore laws. | ||
| And then you've got the judiciary that if the president does violate the law, you can file a lawsuit. | ||
| So, there is that third branch. | ||
| But the judiciary doesn't have an army or police force any more than Congress does. | ||
| So, what we're seeing is in the judicial branch, we've seen some instances where this president, for example, migrants get due process. | ||
| Maybe people think they shouldn't get due process, but they get due process under the Fifth Amendment and under a Supreme Court precedent. | ||
| And he has said, Well, I'm going to send them, I'm going to send them, you know, to third countries without due process anyway, even though courts have said that. | ||
| So, again, we've got the teenager saying, I don't care that mom says I'm supposed to follow the rules. | ||
| I'm going to go buy all my friends a beer. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| What are they going to do to me, right? | ||
| So, we do have the lower courts, lots and lots of lawsuits. | ||
| The wrinkle here, also, I think that is pretty unprecedented, very unprecedented, is for some of these cases, the lower judges are saying, No, you can't do that. | ||
| I mean, the law applies to everybody, including presidents. | ||
| You've got to abide by the law. | ||
| I'm going to issue an order saying abide by the law. | ||
| In some instances, the Trump administration has gone along with the law, presumably. | ||
| In some instances, they've ignored the law. | ||
| In some instances, they've gone up to the Supreme Court and said, Listen, this lower judge told me to abide by the law. | ||
| And we've seen many times where the majority on the Supreme Court have just reversed the lower court with no explanation and said, We're just going to lift that injunction telling him to comply with the law. | ||
| We're not going to explain why we think it's okay to ignore the law. | ||
| We're just going to reverse the injunction in a one-paragraph order. | ||
| That's really, really unprecedented for a couple reasons. | ||
| And I think it's really outside the boundaries of what the Supreme Court should be doing. | ||
| The first reason is that one thing about law and judges and lawyers is that they explain stuff. | ||
| I mean, you see these long, long opinions with dissents. | ||
| The idea is the law is really squishy, and there's always arguments on both sides. | ||
| So, the court's job under Marbury versus Madison 1803 is to say what the law is. | ||
| And that means you've got to say it and explain why you are letting Donald Trump do this. | ||
| Tell us. | ||
| And the second piece is that that's especially important when what they're doing is overruling long-standing precedents. | ||
| So, for example, for certain agency heads, the head of the National Labor Relations Board, for example, Congress says, you know, you can't fire this person unless you've got cause, unless you have a good reason. | ||
| That's been in place for the most part since for 90 years. | ||
| That rule that Congress can limit the president's ability to fire certain people on the idea that you want some independence, you don't want all political actors in the executive branch. | ||
| Now, again, people can disbate whether that's a good idea, but that's been the law since Humphrey's executor. | ||
| The Supreme Court basically let Donald Trump fire the head of the National Labor Relations Board and didn't really explain why they're ignoring Humphrey's executor, which has been around for 90 years. | ||
| This is really, really, really unusual. | ||
| And it's really bad because not only do people not get an ability to weigh in on why it's maybe a good or a bad idea to overrule effectively Humphrey's executor, but then judges in the future in Congress and they pass new statutes, they don't know what's right and what's wrong because the Supreme Court hasn't explained it. | ||
| So they don't know, are we allowed now to make an agency and limit the president's ability to fire them for cause? | ||
| Because they let them do it with the NLRB, even though that was a constitutional statute for years and years and years. | ||
| So we're seeing the U.S. Congress kind of like cave and not do their job, and we're seeing the Supreme Court majority cave and not do their job. | ||
| And the other big issue, which is I'm so appreciative to have the opportunity to talk on a show like this, is this isn't being discussed. | ||
| I mean, most Americans don't have the expertise to understand these nuances, and this is why I'm here. | ||
| But also, you know, the media isn't really covering it in the kind of forealarm fire they should be covering it because it goes to, again, the roadmap for government, which is the Constitution, which is about limiting the power of a bullying government. | ||
| It's about limiting the government from bullying Democrats. | ||
| It's about limiting the government's ability to bully Republicans. | ||
| It's about limiting the government's ability to bully migrants. | ||
| It's about limiting the government's ability to bully MAGA supporters. | ||
| I mean, wherever you are in America, if you give government too much power, it can turn against you. | ||
| And you want rights. | ||
| You want to be able to hold the government accountable when you're the one that the government decides to bully, whether it's this administration or five years or 10 years or 20 years. | ||
| This is why it's an issue that goes across party lines. | ||
| It's not red, blue, you know, what your citizenship status is, whether your LGBTQ, whatever it is. | ||
| It's for everybody. | ||
| And right now, it's really not functioning in the way that the framers designed it to function because no one has dared to violate so many parts of it. | ||
| And the other branches aren't standing up to Donald Trump and saying you got to stop. | ||
| We have a lot of those Americans ready to ask you questions about the topics that you're bringing up. | ||
| Let's start with Derek. | ||
| Derek's in Marilyn, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with Kim Whaley. | ||
| Go ahead, Derek. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi, yeah. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm also an attorney, Ivy League educated, also was a faculty member in a law school. | ||
| I think it appreciates the discussion. | ||
| However, your guest is extremely partisan, and it would be in full disclosure. | ||
| She should also disclose who she voted for and which party she usually supports and everything like that. | ||
| And that would give context to some of her opinions. | ||
| You know, she states things are this is the law, this is the law. | ||
| In fact, not really. | ||
| You know, was she upset when Barack Obama said, I have a pen and I have a phone and did DACA without any congressional authority? | ||
| Was she upset when Joe Biden decided to forgive billions and billions of student loans without congressional authority? | ||
| Was she upset when the Biden administration put all these DEI and transgender policies in place without congressional authority? | ||
| I mean, this is so much, so much of this is what she's saying is hyperbole, particularly if you just listen to the way she talks. | ||
| I've done just as much constitutional stuff as you have, probably. | ||
| Everybody knows it's a, you know, the independent agencies, where are independent agencies in the Constitution, right? | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| They're not in there. | ||
| And Chevron, thank God, was overturned. | ||
| Thank God some of this other stuff was overturned. | ||
| And the Supreme Court does issue opinions. | ||
| I mean, you know, and you are not the arbiter of what the law is. | ||
| The Supreme Court is and Congress and everything like that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, Derek, we'll let her respond to your points. | ||
| Ms. Whaley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm certainly not going to respond to the accusations that I'm partisan and that other people know more. | |
| I mean, certainly other people do. | ||
| I'm really interested in debating the merits of those things. | ||
| And I am happy to go through all of those. | ||
| DACA was about executive enforcement policy. | ||
| That is, can the president decide not to enforce the law as to children that were brought here by their parents? | ||
| I mean, enforcement authority is classic executive branch authority. | ||
| If you're a police officer, you don't have to pull everybody over who is speeding. | ||
| You can pick and choose who you pull over, who's speeding. | ||
| Independent agencies, of course it's not in the Constitution. | ||
| There's lots of things that aren't in the Constitution. | ||
| There's actually, with the exception of the Department of the Treasury, there's no agencies in the Constitution. | ||
| Congress creates those agencies. | ||
| So that law does need to be upheld until Congress amends the law. | ||
| So, you know, you mentioned Chevron was reversed. | ||
| We can have a debate as to whether it was a good or bad idea, but there's the Supreme Court actually taking oral argument, having briefing, and issuing a long opinion explaining why Chevron was reversed. | ||
| Joe Biden's student loan program, there was statutory authority for that. | ||
| There's a disagreement as to whether that statutory authority actually covered it. | ||
| The Supreme Court found that there wasn't. | ||
| Sure, there's ambiguity in the law sometimes, and that's how it's always gone with presidents. | ||
| And, you know, politically, I actually worked for Ken Starr investigating Bill Clinton in the Whitewater investigation. | ||
| So, you know, I'm an equal opportunity accountability holder when it comes to presidents. | ||
| I think every president should abide by the law. | ||
| But the caller is actually blurring some complex legal issues into some kind of umbrella that it's all politics, and it really is. | ||
| And I've been teaching constitutional law and writing on it, scholarly articles and now four books for about 20 years. | ||
| And I'm happy to debate people on the merits, but not based on ad hominem attacks around my politics. | ||
| Democrats line from Stephen and Maryland. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I was just reading an article about 3,400 civil rights cases being dismissed between March and June by the Department of Education. | ||
| And just the wholesale destruction of these various agencies is really concerning to me. | ||
| I'm just wondering what your thoughts were in terms of the unions having the ability to confront like federal employee unions confronting their destruction of their own jobs, mass firing and layoffs. | ||
| You mentioned it a little bit before, but is there anything that you see in the future for them to be able to do to protect their own jobs? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, there's always lawsuits, like I said. | ||
| I mean, that's an important component of our system of government, our separation of powers, is that if the government does something that is illegal in a union, the benefit of a union is if you join a union, you have the, you know, safety in numbers. | ||
| It's not like just you suing for your job. | ||
| The union sues on behalf of the workers, and then the workers have more leverage with respect to the employer than an individual. | ||
| That's the idea behind union. | ||
| It's actually very empowering for just regular workers, as again, against the government. | ||
| When it comes to the Department of Education, one of these cases I mentioned where the Supreme Court is rubber stamping some of the things that are happening out of the Trump administration, the Department of Education is one of those. | ||
| It was in the last couple of weeks, the Trump administration has been firing people en masse. | ||
| And that went up on an emergency motion because a lower federal court judge put an injunction in place, said, no, we need to keep the Department of Education intact until this is litigated. | ||
| The Supreme Court reversed that injunction, sided with Donald Trump. | ||
| And so we're going to see mass cuts to, we have already seen it to the Department of Education, including could impact the 7 million kids who are special needs and have support through the Department of Education to have their educational needs met consistent with federal law. | ||
| For people who want to get into the sort of the legal arguments, I really encourage folks to look up some of the dissenting opinions because as much as the majority in some of these cases isn't explaining why it's doing what it's doing, the dissenting justices, Justice Jackson primarily, but also Justice Sado Mayor and sometimes Justice Kagan, they will kind of give an explanation for what's going on. | ||
| So if people want to inform themselves, not listen to me, you know, or other experts, so to speak, but read it yourself. | ||
| It's all online on the Supreme Court's website. | ||
| And I encourage people to look at those things with an open mind, again, about the broader question of government, not Trump, not Biden, not particular presidents, but government itself, because it's really there to protect all of us, the regular people that don't have the power that the government has. | ||
| That's what it's for. | ||
| And that's what, if I'm partisan towards anything, it's partisan towards regular people to have their rights protected against, you know, a government that has law enforcement power, has military power, all the things that we've given our government through the Constitution and federal law. | ||
| Let's hear from Matt, who joins us from New York State. | ||
| He's on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Matt, you're next up. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I find her to be quite entertaining, although the first person that called in, the lawyer, sort of stole my thunder. | ||
| What she said about DACA as being something that's like a traffic cop, I can remember seeing on TV the clip of Obama before he did it saying, I know this is unconstitutional and I shouldn't do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he did it anyway. | |
| And as far as some other things, you know, she cherry-picked Trump Trump Trump. | ||
| Was she so apoplectic about, you know, I think it's U.S. law says if somebody enters this country illegally, they're supposed to be returned immediately to where they came from. | ||
| But yet instead we've had millions come in here in the last four years. | ||
| And it's something that you were showing earlier. | ||
| She also is a legal news contributor to ABC News, otherwise known as George Stopanepolis. | ||
| Well, then call all those things aside, what would you like to have her address specifically? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just think that not specifically, but I think it seems more like I'm hearing Trump derangement syndrome more than like she likes to claim that it's the government, the government. | |
| But all I want to know is, was she so apoplectic about what Paris climate accords that should have been ratified by Congress and like Obama went right around Congress and did that anyway. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, Matt in New York. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Ms. Whaley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know how to respond to that. | |
| I don't think whataboutism is a particularly persuasive argument. | ||
| And we really, you know, people can disagree with me. | ||
| You know, and I'm quite confident in terms of if you look at the checks and balances in this moment, they are not being enforced in a way that historically has never happened. | ||
| So there might have been, or there have been certainly moments, you know, Nixon, President Nixon, did not abide by appropriations. | ||
| He impounded funds, and Congress backed, came back after him and passed a law making really clear that the appropriations power belongs to the United States Congress through a statute. | ||
| I mean, this is the give and take. | ||
| There's just no, there's no push and pull in this moment. | ||
| And again, I'm really more interested in talking about the merits than personal attacks on my integrity and professionalism. | ||
| Sorry to interrupt you. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I want to read you a little bit. | ||
| There's a professor at the University of Minnesota, Elon Warman. | ||
| He recently wrote about the connection between the courts and the president in a piece for City Journal. | ||
| We're showing our folks the website for that now, but he wrote and portioned this saying: the president may not defy a lawful court order simply because he disagrees with it, but neither must he treat every judicial pronouncement as an internal and universal command. | ||
| A court's ruling settles a dispute before it does not bind the executive branch in every future context or override its duty to interpret and execute the law. | ||
| The president's obligation to follow the law includes respecting judicial decisions, but it also exercises independent judgment where the courts have not spoken or their jurisdiction does not reach. | ||
| What do you think about that assessment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's a little bit, could be misleading or misunderstood. | |
| I think what he's saying is, you know, the difference between laws passed by Congress and judicial decisions are laws are forward-thinking. | ||
| They apply to the future and they apply to everybody, right? | ||
| So, you know, you can't go over 65 miles an hour on that street. | ||
| It's for everyone who's driving on that street. | ||
| A judge takes a question as to whether one party, whether the defendant, it could be an individual private person, it could be the government, violated a law and adjudicates it as to that one party, saying you did or you did not violate the speed limit. | ||
| So I think what this writer is saying is when the judge does that, it doesn't really function like a law in the same way Congress does. | ||
| There might be new circumstances where it's pouring rain or it's a hurricane or there are circumstances where you could argue, listen, it was impossible to abide by the law. | ||
| So he's saying that presidents are going to exercise discretion when it's not clear as a bell that they have certain obligations. | ||
| When it comes to, you know, there are expedited removal procedures, but when it comes to sending, for example, people to third-party countries where they're not from, they've come to the United States from country X, they get sent to country Y. | ||
| The law is very clear that you can't send somebody to country Y unless they get a hearing before a judge and the government has demonstrated that it's okay and they've met the criteria to be sent to country Y. That's not optional. | ||
| And I think that's where I hope me and this writer would agree that there are certain boundaries that judges establish, even for presidents, that cannot be breached unless you get either Congress to change the law, you amend the Constitution, or you get the Supreme Court to reverse itself. | ||
| Then after that, you can take a different action. | ||
| But before that, you're supposed to abide by the rules. | ||
| And again, that does protect all of us. | ||
| And I don't endorse violations of the Constitution by Democratic presidents any more than I endorse violations of the Constitution by Republican presidents. | ||
| This is from Eva. | ||
| She's an Oakland Democrats line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You're on with our guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question about the law. | ||
| We feel that our civil rights have been violated and the Department of Justice and other people in government that are supposed to protect the people, if they are also the president's lawyer, isn't there a conflict of interest? | ||
| Yeah, it is a conflict of interest. | ||
| This happened again with Richard Nixon, where he was being investigated, and so he started firing people in the Department of Justice so that the investigation wouldn't go forward. | ||
| And you probably heard about Watergate. | ||
| And that sort of using or making direction to prosecutors for his own personal benefit ultimately led to his political downfall for a lot of reasons, right? | ||
| He resigned before he was impeached. | ||
| And then after that, Congress passed the Ethics and Government Act. | ||
| I mentioned I work for Ken Starr. | ||
| That was a statute that created an independent prosecutor so that presidents could not fire prosecutors down the line that are making sure they comply with the law. | ||
| And in addition, after that, there was kind of, again, a handshake agreement within the Justice Department with the president that presidents weren't going to talk to the Attorney General. | ||
| The presidents weren't going to call up the Attorney General and say, you should investigate this person. | ||
| You should not investigate that person. | ||
| This was not in a law. | ||
| This, again, was, per my article, just sort of a handshake agreement that this is best for the American people. | ||
| You know, Donald Trump in this administration came in promising to not do that, to use the Justice Department as his, you know, as really his personal lawyers. | ||
| And Matt Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, has said as much, that that's what she believes her job to be. | ||
| This is dangerous. | ||
| This is dangerous precedent. | ||
| So long as you're on the good side of the Justice Department, politically, you're okay. | ||
| But if you're not, maybe you're not. | ||
| And that puts everybody at risk. | ||
| Again, it's a structural thing. | ||
| You know, imagine you have an ice cream shop and you hire the best people. | ||
| You're still going to have checks and balances to make sure that at the end of the day, somebody counts what's in the cash register. | ||
| That's my argument. | ||
| It protects everyone. | ||
| And right now, the Justice Department is politicized and it's a problem. | ||
| Before we run out of time, I do want to briefly reference another article you wrote because you mentioned the topic of free speech. | ||
| You talked in the bulwark recently about the president's lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Can you elaborate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so the Wall Street Journal published an image of what it claims was a drawing that Donald Trump made around a poem that was included with other stories or other notes in Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday card book by Gilan Maxwell, that she compiled all of these things. | |
| And the actual image was not published, just a story about the image. | ||
| And Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for, I think, $10 billion. | ||
| You know, one thing we haven't had a chance to talk about, and maybe Carlos would disagree with it, is free speech, is how using the massive power of the presidency is now being directed around messages around speech that this White House doesn't like. | ||
| That will go, that case will go forward. | ||
| And I think the Wall Street Journal likely has very, very good evidence and reporting to ensure that the story was accurate. | ||
| But to be clear, if you're a public figure like a president, or if you're George Clooney, or you're famous, it's very, very hard to win these defamation lawsuits because you have to actually show that there was actual malice, that the Wall Street Journal not only maybe got it wrong, but that they did it on purpose in sort of a nefarious way. | ||
| So this lawsuit should fail, but we've seen this before, and the Supreme Court for many years has confirmed this. | ||
| Free speech is almost less about who wins the lawsuit and more about does this send a message to journalists to be careful what they say about the government. | ||
| And that's bad for regular people because we want to know what's actually happening so we can vote and we can hold our government accountable. | ||
| So that defamation lawsuit filed against a leading journalistic outlet by a president while he's a sitting president, a president, is also unprecedented. | ||
| I mean, people might like it, but it's unprecedented. | ||
| It sets a new precedent around free speech that is, I believe, is damaging and dangerous, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican that takes office moving forward. | ||
| Let's hear from Aaron in Michigan, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just would first like to state that Ms. Kimberly Will, I'm a big fan. | |
| I've been following your work for some time to clear up this Trump derangement syndrome. | ||
| It's a little caller, watch the language. | ||
| Watch the language, but keep going, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, for Ms. Crimson Lee Wellen, is the fact that it's quite clear and evident that he has the Supreme Court pack. | |
| I was watching an episode yesterday with Justice Kagan before she had took her vacation and a bunch of her sticking points throughout the Supreme Court on a lot of these issues. | ||
| And I can quite say I didn't agree whatsoever. | ||
| And there's quite only two of them that are speaking on behalf of the American people out of those nine. | ||
| So at the end of the day, my question is: where's our checks and balance on the Supreme Court? | ||
| Thanks, Colin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I've been very outspoken on the Supreme Court. | |
| I mean, you know, critical of the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is also bound by the Constitution. | ||
| The Constitution creates the Supreme Court. | ||
| It does not exist without the Constitution. | ||
| It doesn't have to have nine justices. | ||
| The Constitution just says one Supreme Court. | ||
| In theory, it could have one person. | ||
| It's been five justices. | ||
| It's been 11. | ||
| It's now nine justices. | ||
| But these justices, you know, they're bound by the plain language of the Constitution, just like Donald Trump, just like the United States Congress. | ||
| And, you know, I think given kind of like right now the presidency, there's no real checks and balances on the Supreme Court. | ||
| They're going outside their lane and allowing things that any sober lawyer, Republican, Democrat, wherever you are, reading the established law and how they're handling what's happening with this Trump administration. | ||
| I know in my 20 years of doing this, I've never seen such workarounds to the Constitution without an explanation. | ||
| I would just like them to have to justify why they're doing that. | ||
| That's part of their job. | ||
| That's why our taxpayer monies are going to pay their salaries so they explain what they're doing, why they're doing it. | ||
| And in this moment, there's just been some major, major rulings with very, very little explanation, if any. | ||
| And that's really a problem for democracy. | ||
| Peter is in Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Peter, we're coming up to the top of the hour, but go ahead with your question or comment, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I would like to thank her for being on. | |
| I would like to make a basic statement that we should all go back and read our Declaration of Independence. | ||
| We should all go back and read the preamble to our Constitution and recognize that we're supposed to be working together, not against each other. | ||
| And I see people yelling at each other, refusing to listen to the other side, condemning the other side for exactly what they're doing themselves. | ||
| We need to respect each other. | ||
| Democrats need to respect that Republicans think they're patriots. | ||
| Republicans need to respect that Democrats think they're the ones who are the true patriots and that the Republicans are violating everything our Constitution stands for. | ||
| And if we can sit down and not get mad, but actually listen to the other side's argument, we will be doing what Thomas Jefferson and the preamble of our Constitution asked us to do, which is to be respectful of those we disagree with. | ||
| That is what democracy is. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Peter and Marilyn, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a great point to end on, and I think that is the path forward is that we do start finding common ground and listening to each other. | |
| You know, the innovation of the Constitution and our Republic government is to, you know, if the monarchy was a triangle with the king at the top, it was flipped. | ||
| So now the people are at the top and the power trickles down. | ||
| You know, in the preamble, we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, we the people, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, our children, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States. | ||
| That is the idea. | ||
| We are, we the people, not the government, not we the government, we the people. | ||
| And because it's a pluralistic society and there's all different kinds of points of view, I completely agree and it's a great note to end on. | ||
| We have to come together and see common ground if we are going to continue to enjoy the freedoms and liberties that come with limited government, where everyone in government's power is checked. | ||
| Nobody gets all the power. | ||
| Because once that happens, we're no longer a democracy. | ||
| We look more like a monarchy, which is what, you know, our ancestors, some of us, fought against to kick out of the United States. | ||
| I mean, we had a lot of problems back then with slavery and other things, but that's a foundational shift that I believe we should all hold hands and fight to protect. | ||
| The book of our guests, one of the latest how to read the Constitution and Why, Kim Whaley, Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore, ABC News legal contributor. | ||
| Thank you so much for being on our program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great to be with you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
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