There is an understandable apocalyptic response to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling. People are, rightly, shocked by the idea that the president of the United States can now act with almost complete impunity if his behavior can be described as an “official act.” It’s an idea that flies in the face of the fundamental values of this country’s history.
But there is something we must keep in mind as the fight to preserve American democracy takes another dark turn: Those of us who believe in the core tenets of liberal democracy and the American experiment cannot surrender prematurely to the worst impulses and machinations of those who would destroy it. And that means we must not surrender to the idea that if Donald Trump is re-elected, it automatically means the end of democracy as we know it.
I know the stakes are extremely high. I have zero illusions about what Trump, the right, and the entire Republican Party would do to our democracy if given the chance. But I also refuse to give in to that worst-case scenario in advance. We are still a constitutional republic. We, the people, still have a say in what we will and will not accept. It is up to us to define what this society looks like and what democracy looks like.
Six Supreme Court zealots may say that the president is nearly immune to any number of corrupt acts, but there is still the rule of law in this country. And we, as Americans, still know what is right and wrong, even in the worst cases.
To use the oft-cited example, this decision could very well mean that Trump would have immunity from prosecution if he ordered SEAL Team Six to kill someone — the court’s liberals said so in their dissent. And the conservative majority might agree that this is the case, but that does not make such an order legal and certainly not right.
Nearly 150 years ago, the Posse Comitatus Act was passed illegal for the president to unilaterally arm federal troops to intervene in matters of civil affairs. The court ruling did not erase that law.
Everyone understands that SEAL Team Six killing a political rival for personal reasons would be an outrage. murder. We all understand that; it would be an illegal order. And we have reason to hope that in that situation the guardrails would remain in place.
In 2022, Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper spoke to CBS’s “60 Minutes” about how the then-president had planned to unleash the military on protesters two years earlier:
“He’s finally going to give a direct order to send paratroopers into the streets of Washington, D.C., and I think with guns and bayonets, and that would be terrible,” Esper said. “He says, ‘Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?’ And he’s suggesting that we should do that, that we should send in the troops and shoot the protesters.”
That didn’t happen — not because people didn’t understand that Trump might have been criminally exposed — but because everyone around him, including Esper, knew it was unlawful and wrong.
When it comes to the many dire implications of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, we need to make sure that the constitutional culture in this country is strong enough to restrain the worst impulses of a potential second Trump administration. I know that sounds naïve, and I know there are many who will disagree with me. But if Trump wins another term, the Mark Espers of the world must refuse to act on his worst impulses. We must reinforce the idea that we are accountable to the Constitution, not the president.
But admitting up front that Trump is now free to end American democracy as a whole is like giving him permission to do so. And I refuse to give him that.
This is an adapted excerpt from the episode of July 2nd from “All in with Chris Hayes”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
