The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday to significantly expand presidential immunity was an incredibly generous favor for one of the men hoping to win your vote in November.
But it’s not the man you’re thinking of.
President Joe Biden desperately needed something to change the conversation after his disastrous performance in last Thursday’s debate, which led to a weekend of whining among Democrats, with public and private debates over whether he should be replaced with a more capable candidate.
What better way to punctuate that tumult than by having the court’s conservative justices — the kind of people who grew up thinking Richard Nixon was in bad shape — declare that former President Donald Trump might not have broken the laws we all saw him break at all if he had been acting like a president at the time and not a narcissistic, spoiled man who can’t stand being a loser?
Yo, Joe, send those judges a gift basket or something. You know Clarence Thomas doesn’t turn down free stuff.
Supreme Court ruling on immunity helps Biden’s campaign
Sure, sure, the more liberal justices worried about the damage to democracy if a former president claimed that breaking the law was simply part of the job. Trump and the Republican National Committee sent emails to their supporters asking for donations based on what he called “a great victory for democracy and our Constitution.”
Biden’s campaign rushed to set up a Monday morning call with members of the news media to condemn the ruling. The very first question asked on that call was: Will Biden now “take on the Supreme Court,” specifically because of his performance during the debate?
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Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said the campaign would embrace the ruling as “an amplification” of concerns about Trump’s despotic aspirations.
It’s one thing for a former president to declare out of hand that he’ll be a dictator on day one if he gets re-elected. It’s another thing for the highest court in the land to say, Go ahead, be the worst version of yourself.
Fears the Supreme Court will pave the way for dictator Trump
Fulks clearly didn’t want to discuss the debate. But like a Supreme Court that openly ignores the rule of law, it was too hard to ignore for those on the phone with the Biden campaign.
“Our campaign will continue to argue that the stakes in this election could not be higher,” he said. “And frankly, today’s Supreme Court opinion only makes it clearer that if Donald Trump ever gets anywhere near the Oval Office again, he will rule as a dictator.”
Trump, now convicted as a criminal in New York for covering up his 2016 hush-money payments to a porn star to keep quiet about his affair, still faces criminal charges in federal court in Washington, D.C., and in state court in Georgia for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And he has another federal case pending in Florida, where he is accused of refusing to return secret government documents he took home after his election loss to Biden.
His many lawyers will now rush to court to argue – again – that it was all official presidential business and not the desperate misconduct of a sore loser.
Biden says Supreme Court decision lifts presidential restrictions
Reporters at the Biden call had more questions. One: Where is Biden?
If his campaign sees this as a day of demarcation for democracy, will he talk about it publicly? Again, this question was asked in the context of Biden’s debate performances and argues that he should do more publicly to assuage concerns among his supporters.
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Biden answered that question in a short speech from the White House on Monday night, warning for five minutes about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling.
“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America,” Biden said. “Each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States. With today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that has fundamentally changed. For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits to what a president can do.”
Biden called it a dangerous precedent that a president should limit himself only to the limits he has “imposed” on himself.
We have seen that Trump has made up his own rules. That is how things go terribly wrong.
The next step for Biden’s campaign
It was smart of Biden to come out and focus attention on something other than the debate.
A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released Monday found that 41% of Democrats say their party should replace Biden as their nominee. Among the 1,000 registered voters surveyed, they voted Trump the winner of the debate by nearly 5-1.
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I wonder if pollsters are now calling voters to ask what they think of the Supreme Court and the outdated idea that no one is above the law.
If not, Biden should take on that task. It’s not new to him. He campaigned in 2020 on ending Trump’s chaos. His best argument for a second term is still Trump’s first term.
And he’s still losing the fight. Time to change tactics.
The Supreme Court may be the only institution less popular than the presidency. Biden should go out and present his case against the justices to the public.
Follow USA TODAY election columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court immunity decision helps Biden avert debate disaster
