In the last 55 years, I think the only president I couldn’t take might be Obama. Regan? Bush (either)? Nixon? Trump?? are you kidding?
Now if you’re saying President Camacho is coming for me, I’m running for the hills!
I guess I am thinking of this hypothetical being used by a president that’s a bully and knows what he can get away with. He’s going to kick your ass because he can and because the Secret Service will keep you from hitting him. So the President isn’t in any actual danger.
Not clear to me if the President would be allowed to get in a fight where his opponent was allowed to fight back. If the President pressed the matter, would it be an automatic 25th amendment? At this point I’m a little dubious that the 25th amendment will eve actually be implemented with a conscious President. So he’d probably be allowed to do it. Similarly, it’s not clear to me what would be the response to a bullying president who hits you because you can’t fight back.
I’d have problems. I am reasonably confident I can hold my own in a one-on-one fight with an elderly man.
But this is an asymetrical fight. The President will be able to hit me but he has a bunch of bodyguards around him who will prevent me from striking back at him. And I have no illusions I can outfight a group of professional bodyguards.
It’s also going to be an asymetrical aftermath. The President, as noted, has the ability to pardon himself and others and can avoid the legal consequences of his unprovoked assault. I however will have to face those consequences even though I was the attacked party.
Pretty sure there is a specific crime that a local cop could arrest someone for, if they come across a belligerent septuagenarian in the process of starting a fight (and explicitly saying that is what they are doing).
In theory at least I would imagine the law apply whether its a drunk biker outside a dive bar at two in the morning, or the POTUS at a rally.
In theory? Yes. In practice? Doubtful.
Let’s face facts; there have probably been a lot of small town cops who would have been happy to arrest somebody like Clinton or Obama or Biden for “committing socialist treason” or something along those lines. I’m pretty sure there are safeguards that prevents local police from arresting the President when he happens to visit their jurisdiction.
I’m pretty sure that if they didn’t manage to restrain him before he got to grips with you, and you belted him in defense, they probably would just pull you apart and you’d suffer nothing else, assuming you didn’t attack him, and only fought in self defense.
Now if he attacks you, and you do more than just defending yourself, then yeah, they’ll get you off him any way they can.
You just have to wait until he’s an EX-President, then anything goes:
(If he happens to also have been the director of the CIA, watch out)
That makes sense to me. If I’m in my Prince Naseem bob and weave routine and they can just step in between, maybe I don’t get concussed or get any limbs broken.
Given that we’re contemplating a scenario where I have slammed the president of the United States’ head with my fist, though, I maintain that any ambiguity is getting resolved in favor of me abruptly ceasing to be threat. I think once you’re talking about someone having already harmed the president, and being in a ready state to do so again… yeesh. Who’s to say I don’t have a knife or half a brick in my pocket.
They’re going to keep you from hitting him by dragging him away and getting him to a safer location. That’s what they are trained to do to remove a threat.
Also remember someone starting a fight with you does not make all your actions self defense. Assuming its not a “stand your ground” state, you have a duty to retreat from the situation, and failing to do so will mean you are not acting in self defense.
The cop might give you the benefit of the doubt for that drunk biker outside a dive bar, but the secret service probably won’t for the POTUS.
You can add enough ridiculous assumptions to your hypothetical to preclude any rational response. When you’ve added enough, the only possible answer is “whatever you imagine in your fantasy.”
The Secret Service will tackle and remove you before the President gets to you. They will also remove the President because an unruly mob engaging in a brawl is not a good environment for him to mix around in. They won’t give him enough time to object. It’s true, you haven’t committed a crime but the Secret Service agents who tackled you will just say it looked like you were raising a fist and that’s enough to justify their response (It might even be true - somebody girding for a fight is going to have very different body posture than a guy just standing around).
As long as you don’t try to fight off the Secret Service, you won’t be detained longer than it takes the President to be secluded away and given the chance to calm down.
You can say that the Secret Service violated your rights against unlawful arrest and detention. Look up “qualified immunity” and find the cases that say that you have a clearly established right to beat up the president when he threatens you. I don’t plan on waiting. The Secret Service wouldn’t jail you - they would preempt the fight and then you would go home.
The only issue with the 25th amendment is that it will never be invoked for the president’s decisions unless almost none of his party members are left in the Senate.
Here we disagree. They would restrain both and stop the situation. They would execute their duties imperfectly, as they do every other day of the week.
Stand your ground and duty to retreat laws are generally about the use of deadly force, not the use of any force. If you’re just, like, pushing somebody away, those usually aren’t coming into consideration.
Is there much distinction for a 78 year old man? A punch in the face is pretty life threatening for someone that old.
Actually, I don’t think we disagree. I’m sure they would physically lay hands on you and remove you, possibly quite forcefully. But unless you escalated the situation it would be over quickly and most likely you’d be no worse for wear.
When I wrote “disabling” I was thinking more in terms of them shooting you or pummeling you into unconsciousness. I think we are in agreement that unless you acted out beyond standard self defense you’d be removed from the scene as safely as possible under the circumstances.
Then yeah, I guess we largely agree. The Secret Service isn’t going to help the President beat someone to a pulp nor are they going to do it for him. They aren’t going to use excessive force against the OP.
I’d have to point out the nearest thing to this happening in real life I’ve heard of, when the deputy prime minister in the UK got into a fight with someone who threw an egg at him:
Probably the most relevant precedent from U.S. history is from 1835, when an unemployed house painter attempted to shoot Andrew Jackson. His pistol and backup pistol both misfired, and an enraged Jackson (67 years old at the time) started beating him with his cane. Bystanders (including then-Rep. Davy Crockett) jumped in as much to keep Jackson from beating the man to death as to restrain the attempted assassin.
Usually the safeguard is that he has an army of Secret Service with him. Not that he would need it in most cases. The main safeguard is that the majority of small town cops are not insane.
Of course, we are talking about an insane outlier here. As the last president demonstrated, once cannot completely discount the insane.
What if he’s doing it in DC?
According to the Office of the Pardon Attorney:
Under the Constitution, only federal criminal convictions, such as those adjudicated in the United States District Courts, may be pardoned by the President. In addition, the President’s pardon power extends to convictions adjudicated in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and military court-martial proceedings.
The Superior Court of the District of Columbia is the DC equivalent of state courts, so yes the President could pardon charges brought against someone by the District.