The Supreme Court didn’t give Trump special powers. They gave it to the office of the President.
Joe Biden currently holds that office and will do so as long as he is alive and able to do the job for another six months.
Seems to me that if Donald Trump is the existential threat that some believe him to be, Biden not only can do whatever he can to stop him, but he has a moral obligation to do so.
This isn’t to say he will because only Republicans are into the fun of tearing down established norms to ensure their team wins. Democrats are all heart, no spine, and Biden is nothing if not a Democrat.
Yesterday Joe Biden gave a televised reaction to the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity. Rather than link to the video, here is a link to a page with transcripts.
Here is the part of the speech that I think is relevant to your OP:
Now over 200 years later, with today’s Supreme Court decision, once again it’ll depend on the character of the men and women who hold that presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the presidency, because the law will no longer do it. I know I will respect the limits of the presidential powers that I’ve had for three and a half years.
Biden is taking the tact that he can show that he is responsible, and Donald Trump has proven that he can’t be responsible. Biden even mentioned how Trump was the first and only POTUS to reject the transition of power.
Nearly four years ago, my predecessor sent a violent mob to the US Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. We all saw it with our own eyes, we sat there and watched it happen that day. Attack on the police, the ransacking of the Capitol, a mob literally hunting down the House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Gallows erected to hang the Vice President, Mike Pence. I think it’s fair to say it’s one of the darkest days in the history of America.
Now, the man who sent that man to the US Capitol is facing potential criminal conviction for what happened that day. The American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy on January 6th makes him unfit for public office in the highest office in the land. The American people must decide if Trump’s abrasive violence to preserve his power is acceptable. Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide if they want to entrust the president once again, the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing he’ll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it.
He’s imploring the people to not return a dangerous criminal to the highest office of the country because he has demonstrated that he is the wrong person to hand this kind of power to, a power that is now stronger than it ever has been in the nation’s history. He’s doing that rather than wield that power himself. It shows the kind of character Biden has. I hope it works.
You’re telling me that history would look kindly on someone who had the power and the inclination to stop Hitler, but instead of doing everything he could, he instead implored people?
I think history would look back on that person as wrong.
Maybe I shouldn’t Godwin this thread but nobody is saying Trump would be a bad President, or there’s a difference in policy goals. Trump is considered a threat to Democracy. End stop.
Either Trump isn’t as bad as he is made out to be, or he is.
If he is, just hoping people do the right thing when you have the power to actually do something about it is unconscionable.
I don’t find it a very compelling argument when someone says the best way to prevent a person from abusing power is to abuse your power to stop them. You’re pretty much advocating that we start up our own version of MAGA but just behind someone else. No thank you.
ETA: Let me put it this way, if Biden does what you suggest, I will not vote for him.
Except you’re factually wrong: He isn’t abusing power because the Supreme Court just ensured that it’s literally not an abuse of power. That’s the point you don’t seem to get. It’s only a use of power.
And if you’re claiming that it’s still an ethical or moral abuse of power, please tell me how it is ethical or moral to allow evil to win when you have the power to stop it?
When Trump wins the White House and does all the terrible things he and his fan club want him to do, I’ll breathe so much easier knowing that we could have stopped it, but golly, our integrity was way more important.
I’ll sleep well knowing that when fascism came, the best response from the opposition was a strict adherence to institutional and political decorum.
Look, if you believe the best way to preserve democracy is to destroy it, that’s fine, just act on it and vote Republican.
What I believe is that it’s too late to preserve Democracy. The President has this power whether it’s Biden today, Trump tomorrow, or anyone else after that. Preserve? Sorry, that horse left the barn.
The rules have changed. And you want to keep playing by the old rules.
I agree with this. This thread is advocating “full out dictatorship” and I’m not even close to that yet. That’s literal civil war and that’s what we should be trying to avoid.
The Power of the presidency will put an end to the “official act immunity” thing- simply by two old RW SCOTUS members leaving and two new Biden appointees coming in. The new 5-4 SCOTUS will interpret “official acts” very narrowly. And that’s not bad. If the President sends a team or a drone to take down a terrorist, we dont want him indicted for murder by the other party. A sitting president has always had immunity anyway- for all intents and purposes. This ruling is not some weird crazy thing some had interpreted as being.
It is just that Official Acts has to be interpreted narrowly. And if Biden wins- it will be.
