Analysis: John Roberts remains confounded
by Donald Trump as election approaches
The former star appellate lawyer who allies once cast as the smartest person in the room remains confounded by the realities of Donald Trump.
Roberts was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.The Roberts Court has been in sync with the GOP political agenda largely because of decisions the chief justice has authored: For Trump and other Republicans. Against voting rights and racial affirmative action. Against federal regulations over environmental, public health and consumer affairs.“You wonder if you’re going to be John Marshall or you’re going to be Roger Taney,” Roberts told a law school audience in 2010, referring to the great 19th century chief justice and the latter chief who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision declaring that slaves were not citizens. “The answer is, of course, you are certainly not going to be John Marshall. But you want to avoid the danger of being Roger Taney.”
In one early interview, Roberts told C-SPAN: “The most important thing for the public to understand is that we are not a political branch of government. They don’t elect us. If they don’t like what we’re doing, it’s more or less just too bad.”
How Roberts can be so smart and so dumb at the same time is something to behold, assuming it’s just not posturing. Roberts and his anti-democracy, anti-civil liberties, anti-rule of law and shockingly pro-corruption decisions has put him somewhere in the Roger Taney realm. Can he really be so dense, or is it just a cynical act? Enquiring minds want to know.
Q: John Roberts claims to be confounded by negative public reactions to some of his court decisions over the years. Given his intelligence and his politics, is that just cynical posturing or is it possible that Roberts really is that clueless?A: It’s difficult to definitively determine whether Chief Justice John Roberts is genuinely confounded by negative public reactions or if his claimed confusion is a form of posturing. .... Given Roberts’ intelligence and long experience in Washington, it seems unlikely that he is entirely clueless about public reactions.
I think Roberts is engaging in cynical posturing, but we will never know for sure because he is also a practiced, cynical liar.
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‘Totally illegal’: Trump escalates rhetoric
on outlawing political dissent and criticism
Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power.“[Harris is] a criminal. She’s a criminal,” said Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money trial. “She really is, if you think about it.”An expert who studies authoritarianism and fascism said Trump’s rhetoric about criminalizing dissent is familiar, and could carry serious implications for the country if he’s elected president.
“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power, or exposes their corruption, or releases information that’s harmful to them in any way becomes illegal,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University who wrote the 2020 book “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.”
“He’s actually rehearsing, in a sense, what he would be doing as head of state, which is what Orban does, Modi is doing, Putin has long done,” she said, referring to the leaders of Hungary, India and Russia, respectively. “Just as there’s a divide now because of this brainwashing about who is a patriot and who is a criminal about Jan. 6, right? In the same way, telling the truth in any area — journalists, scientists, even people like me, anybody who is engaged in objective inquiry, prosecutors, of course — they become criminal elements and they need to be shut down.”
“It is about criminalizing dissent,” she said. “There is a method to his madness in that he has taken people on a journey of indoctrination.”
Other evidence of what we are facing:
Trump’s former Joint Chiefs chair: Trump is ‘fascist to the core’ -- “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” retired Gen. Mark Milley said. “Now I realize he’s a total fascist.”
Ooh, total facist, not partial. Good to know.
Ooh, full dictator, not partial. Good to know.
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