President Biden took to the podium Monday evening to decry the Supreme Court ruling about presidential immunity. Eager to change the subject from his debate performance last week, the president called out the Court, claiming the 6-3 decision — which stated that presidents have legal immunity for acts committed in their official capacity as president — will make a king out of the person holding the highest office in our country, with some on the left even claiming former President Trump could order an assassination without any criminal implication.
Such an immediate response by the current president cannot help but beg the question: If the legal actions heretofore taken against former President Trump aren’t politically motivated (as Democrats claim), then why does President Biden always seem to give a political speech almost immediately after there’s a new ruling?
The press conference Monday night wasn’t the first one.
Hearken back, if you will, to May 31st, just one day after the Trump hush money verdict, when, much like Big Brother in “1984,” Biden was there, claiming that no one was above the law, leading the national discussion, translating what was happening so that everyone knew just how serious it all was.
The current president’s speeches always seem to return to this primary subject, suggesting that the subject of Trump’s legal issues is the central focus of his campaign. “The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the person I’m looking at right now,” said Biden during the debate on June 27. Then, at his press conference the day after the hush-money convictions: "The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed," Biden said. "Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself."
The only fair conclusion seems to be that, contrary to what Democrats and the president have said, the Trump investigations aren’t the objective, legitimate effort of the Justice Department to prosecute crime but a petty, narrow political strategy carried out primarily by the White House itself.
This fact has been observable for some time by those willing to see it, for it was there in the early days, with the report of the Mueller investigation, back when Trump was president.
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” said Mueller after his investigation.
Thus, the burden of proof shifted away from innocent-till-proven-guilty, toward guilty-till-proven-innocent, and we’ve been living with the fallout ever since.
This new standard of justice was there back when the conversation with the Ukraine president happened, and it was assumed — quite separate from the law — that when former President Trump asked the Ukrainian president to look into potential wrongdoing by the Bidens, he could only have been doing so due for political reasons — for evidently, it was impossible the president could be fulfilling his official role as president.
This topsy-turvy view was extended to the January 6 riot. Despite Trump posting on Twitter his desire for peace, as well as the video in which he asks the protestors to go home, the guilty-till-proven-innocent standard stuck, and it was decided in all the emotion of the day that Trump had to be guilty — for simply no other interpretation was possible.
Finally, this overturning of the justice standard is also seen with the Georgia case, when the only possible interpretation of Trump essentially saying “find me the votes” was that the former president was instructing somebody to create them, rather than find them through vigorous legal means.
Left-wing reactions to the current Supreme Court ruling have proven much the same.
“We’re making this into an imperial presidency,” one television anchor said.
Nor could my old friend Mr. Green hold back: “It’s making Trump into a King,” he said at our lumber office this week.
“Exactly how is the new ruling making the former president a king?” I asked Mr. Green.
“Because it’s giving him the right to decide between what is an official act and an unofficial act,” he said.
“But this isn’t so,” I told him. “It isn’t the president who decides this.”
“Then who decides?” he asked.
“The law,” I said.
My hope is that the Supreme Court’s ruling can turn our standard of justice back to what it always was – to the idea that, until a person is proven by a court to be guilty, then he or she is innocent, instead of the other way round. For a trial by an emotional, frenzied media (which we’ve had much of the time with the Trump cases) makes left-wingers feel good, and presumably sells television ads; but it’s seriously lacking when a rational, solid answer to tough questions is needed.
All this reminds me of something Warren Buffet said about the “rising tide that lifts all boats,” and what happens when this tide goes out and a recession comes. “Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked,” the investment guru said.
This could also be said about the state of the current political left regarding legal realities. For, as long as all this was being tried in the rising tide of the media frenzy – in which the standard of justice was guilty-till-proven-innocent – it looked like the former president must be guilty. Now that the Court has finally weighed in, the emotional tide has receded and rationalism has assumed its proper role, making the truth much more obvious. From a legal standpoint, due in large part to their inverted standard of justice, the left has been caught swimming naked in a receding tide.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at allen@kellerlumber.net.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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