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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – giving the POTUS a kicking Nixon incurred a generation’s outrage and mockery for insisting to interviewer David Frost that, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Trump, within the first month of his second term, asserted on social media that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” a formulation frequently attributed to Napoleon. When asked the previous month by The New York Times whether there were any constraints on his power, he said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” These statements are much closer to reality than they were during his first term, thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court decision, Trump v. United States, granting presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for the exercise of “core constitutional powers,” plus lesser forms of immunity for “official acts.”
– Matt Welch gives the POTUS a kicking.
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And in the UK, when people, ignorant people I hope, say parliament is sovereign, that is the kind of door that they are opening and we don’t have a codified constitution to stop it
Don’t Presidents need to sign an oath? Why bother doing that if you are immune from prosecution? And how could anyone impeach you?
In reality an American President’s power is very limited – so the post is absurd.
Especially taking quotes out of context.
I am no fan of President Richard Progressive Nixon (and he was the most Progressive President up to that time – general price controls in peace time and the support Mao the largest scale mass murdering egalitarian in history) – but he was talking about a specific case – seeking to find out who was illegally leaking information from the Federal Government, a private citizen can not do XYZ in such a context (it is not their job) but the head of the Executive Branch (the President) can – indeed that is one of the things the head of the Executive Branch is for, a position far older than (say) the Director of the FBI – the FBI did not use to exist, and its bureaucracy is often not very effective – even when it is not compromised by its own partisan agenda (if a President really wants something done – he has to do it himself, or hire people directly to do it). That the head of the Executive Branch is in charge of the Executive Branch should be about as contraversial as saying that 1+1=2.
And pretending that President Trump is committing crimes – when he is actually trying to uncover who has committed crimes, is not good.
If (if) what is quoted in the post is typical of what Matt Welch has written – then Mr Welch is as waste of space. Indeed he is worse than that – he is deliberately diverting attention from an out of control government bureaucracy (the Deep State) and pretending the elected President is the problem.
It is shouting “fire” in the middle of a flood – the problem is not the excessive powers of the President, the problem is how little power the President now has over the government.
As for “corruption” – corruption did exist in the Nixon Administration, but it was more limited than corruption the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations – corruption which is ignored.
One sees the twisting of history before this – for example obsessive attention to corruption in the Adminstration of Warren Harding (to divert attention from the fact that Harding was a very good President) – and almost totally ignoring the vastly greater corruption in the Roosevelt and Truman Administations.
“Reason” seems to have gone down the Establishment plughole – indeed it may have done so long before this article.
I remember when I first heard that “libertarian” Charles Koch was cooperating with George Soros to push censorship of the internet (sorry I mean “counter disinformation” – although the “disinformation” turns out to be the truth, and the official line turns out to be the lie) – I was shocked back then, but I am no longer shocked.
I expect this sort of behaviour now – the American Libertarian Party (LP) is utterly corrupted. As my friend Bruce Cohen tried to explain to me years ago – but I was too dim to understand what he was trying to explain.
For this article to pretend that President Trump is the problem, not the establishment he is fighting (sadly not fighting very successfully) – is par-for-the-course.
But that is self evidently not true. Irrespective of what Trump said the simple fact is that many, Many, MANY of his initiatives have been stopped either by the courts or by the legislature or by the states or by the public. He is self evidently not omnipotent, self evidently not an unconstrained dictator.
And that, all those checks and balances, are exactly the way the system is designed to work. President Jackson is alleged to have said in regards to a decision stating that Georgia state laws had no force in the Cherokee nation: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Trump, on the other hand, may have raged at the courts, may have complained about them, may have tried to squeeze through a loophole or two, but he has never failed to follow a court order.
All the TDS-ers might like to rage against Trump, and I have my complaints too, but this is not one of them.
Yes Fraser – the article is drivel, out of context quotes and all.
The bitter truth is that President Trump has not done too much – he has done too little, far too little.
True his powers are very limited – but (as the old French television series “The Flashing Blade” used to say in its theme music) “it is better to have faught and lost – than not to have fought at all”.
On things such as government spending – a case can be made that “not fought at all” is what has happened with this Administration – it has done some things, but minor overall.
“Reason” magazine is no longer part of the solution – it is part of the problem, the problem of the endless lies of the media (which echo the endless lies of the education system).
Even on basic things such as ensuring honest elections – “Reason” offers us platitudes about how local authorities (read corrupt Democrats and RINOs) should be allowed to run elections any way they see fit, it offers no solutions to the problems of fake mail-in-ballots, electronic voting machines, and all the rest of the institutional corruption.
This is how Samizdata now prepares for the US midterms. Yay, communism!
Sadly, we live in a system of binary electoral choice. Publish this story three weeks later, and attack corruption. Publish it now, two weeks before election day, and attack the US Right and boost the US Left in the elections.
@bobby b
Sadly, we live in a system of binary electoral choice.
I agree with your comment but something I have been thinking about is what you say here. And I’d say this: there are only two teams play in the Superbowl but that doesn’t mean there are only two teams in the NFL. Failure at the federal level starts a lot earlier than November. As an example, I think it is horrific that Lindsay Graham’s sister is the candidate in South Carolina. I’m sure she is a nice enough lady, but she evidently knows nothing at all. I mean it is horrifying the Lindsay Graham represented South Carolina so long given that it is an extremely conservative state and he is verging on a war mongering RINO. What is it Rush used to call him Lindsay Gramnesty.
I’m really not sure why that is. Why super conservative states send these appalling RINOs to congress. My God, Alaska sends Lisa whatshername. Though the electoral system there is deeply corrupt. FWIW, it is happening on the democrat side too — liberal states sending the most dreadful candidates to congress, people that the regular run of the mill democrat would find horrifying.
I guess it is the whole process that is so captured by the establishment that voting is an inconvenience.
And in a sense it is also cover for the real power players, the permanent civil service, the people who are the real power in the country, entirely unaccountable, and with its own, self propagating agenda. Of all organizations, forget the courts, forget the legislature, forget the states, forget the people, it is the civil service that has been the main barrier to Trump’s agenda. That and his insane obsession with foreign policy and the devastating Iran war.
It is worth considering the stakes in this election, which looks like it is going to be a blood bath. But consider this discussion:
https://x.com/alx/status/2112919176679756134
The extreme lefties want Elon Musk in jail, the agencies to resist his every move. AI and robotics are the last hope for the west, and these whack jobs want to put away the only person who can really bring that about. Of course the abundance these technologies will release are what they actually oppose. If people have abundance they might, god forbid, not need the government nearly as much.
what bobby b said at 5:38pm.
and Fraser Orr at 6:39pm, it’s not just the civil service. Check out today’s post on Substack from Jeff Childers, “Coffee&COVID”, where he lays out the latest data dump from DataRepublican. The Deep State is not just in the government! Maybe it’s mostly not in the government?
GregWA – YES the Corporate State certainly includes many of the big Corporations, that is rather in the name.
Witness the CEO of United Airlines – he is useless waste-of-space, like most Corporate CEOs, he does nothing but harm to the company, but he dresses up in drag and goes on about how there should be a inheritance tax of 100% (as bobby b points out – that is Communism, at least after one generation), and he gets paid over 30 million Dollars a year for being a leftist who does nothing but harm. Matt Walsh is rather closer to the truth than Matt Welsh is.
The more I think about the article the more absurd it clearly is – it is not just a lie, it reverses the truth. It is as if it was a mainstream media article, or something from the education system. It is sad (tragically sad) to see “Reason” magazine fall so far.
And Fraser is correct about the Republicans sending useless people to Congress – people like Senator Cornyn, who has now taken the mask off and is openly a leftist – going around calling Republican candidates “racists” (as if any group of human beings in history have not tended to favour people like themselves and be wary of people who are NOT like them – that is called “human nature”, having an “outgroup preference” rather than an “ingroup preference” is a form of mental illness – sometimes called “suicidal empathy”) and basically calling upon people to vote Democrat.
Partly this is because Washington corrupts people – but it is also the nomination process. If a Republican candidate is any good the media (and the education system) will denounce them as a monster, whereas if a candidate is a useless waste-of-space, or even an active traitor – the media (and the education system – and so on) will celebrate them as a “good candidate”.
The creates an incentive to “vote for the shit” in primary contests for Senate and House – as Republican Primary voters know that a shit will be given a less hard time by the media, and (therefore) is more likely to win the general election.
A candidate can overcome this – by creating a popular following around themselves that overwhealms the media (and so on) – as Barry Goldwater did in 1964 – but look what happened to Barry Goldwater in the general election – Barry Goldwater was a better man, in every possible way, than Lyndon Johnson, and would have made a vastly better President – but he was defeated 60-40.
Donald J. Trump is an interesting case – as the media were originally soft on him in 2016 – it was Ted Cruz who recieved their hatred early on, partly because the media thought that DJT was a joke candidate and wanted the Republicans to nominate him.
When the Republicans did nominate him – the media turned on him with a degree of vicious dishonestly that was astonishing even for them – but it did-not-work.
People had already seen “the Donald” on television for years (many years) – most people had already made up their minds about him, so the media campaign in late 2016 and since then “He eats babies! He rapes them first!” (rather like this “Reason” magazine article) – did not work.
Who does the CEO of United Airlines think should be the pilots of aircraft?
Does he think in terms of ability to fly the aircraft, reliablity and honesty? Of course NOT – as that would produce a lot of middle aged white-straght-males people (with his “outgroup preference”) he hates and wishes were exterminated off the face of the Earth. No – what matters in an airline pilot is their race, “gender”, and sexual preference – and if that produces pilots who fly aircraft into mountains, so-be-it, sacrifices (of passengers) have to be made for The Cause.
It is not just Hollywood Corporations making boring agitprop films and television shows – to show their committment to leftism.
“L’Etat, C’est moi,” isn’t a motto that should come out of a president of the United States, even if he’s democratically elected. Checks and balances.
American presidents in recent years have been awful. I suppose with Trump, the difference is that there’s no filter. He doesn’t even hide his power lust. Obama was slicker.
Around the time he was elected for his second term, Trump was sitting in the White House and asked about the Declaration and its words. He talked about
“unity” and things like that. Nothing about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I’m afraid that the West is in serious trouble. Hard times ahead.
@Johnathan Pearce
“L’Etat, C’est moi,”
That doesn’t sound like something Trump would say. Sounds a bit fancy for him.
Checks and balances.
But those checks and balances have been extremely effective, almost to a comical degree with Trump.
American presidents in recent years have been awful.
Can you give me an example of a president who has been good? They are pretty rare. Powerful positions attract psychopaths and megalomaniacs. Thatcher and Coolidge and people like them are rare indeed.
I’m afraid that the West is in serious trouble. Hard times ahead.
There is hope for the west in new technologies, technologies that could make the whole dependence on the government, on which their power resides, no longer necessary. The only question is — does it get strangled in the cradle? Does it get enslaved by the political class. Many years ago I read an article by Robert Frietas. It surprisingly seems to have disappeared from the Internet, something that is rather ironic really. But his argument is that the freedom of the internet would be powerfully undermining to the government’s ability to control and consequently would unleash a wave of free markets. Assessment of this is complex because for sure the Internet has unleashed massive free markets, from youtube to ebay to a amazon. Places were some small person can build a fortune by producing great stuff. But there is another side to it in that the Internet has been used by government to oppress us in new and dangerous ways.
I hope the new wave of technology is too quick for them. But the prospects of the current mid terms — something that I think really is one of the most consequential elections in human history — are not looking good right now. But we will have to wait and see. Technology moves fast and governments do not. Let us hope that the benefits of the technology redound to the people fast enough that the monstrous leviathan cannot get a tight enough grip.
Sure, that is indeed self evidently true, but I think the SQOTD is focused in the remarkable fact Trump would actually say: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
To my mind, such utterances indicate a degree of detachment from reality that we also see in his dealing with Moscow, a demonstration of wishful thinking and self-delusion that has Trump announcing agreements involving Ukraine and Russia than neither Ukraine nor Russia agreed to.
Johnathan Pearce and Perry de Havilland – stop playing with out of context quotes. Matt Welsh plays this game – but that is no reason for you to do so.
The trouble with President Trump (as you both well know) is that he does not have much power, and he often does not even use the power he does have.
For example, he could have declared a state of emergency (as some people begged him to do – pointing to the legal prescidents, prior Supreme Court rulings) to end MASS mail-in-ballots and voting machines, and demand proof of citizenship for voting – but he did NOT do so.
He could also have destroyed the Islamic Republic of Iran regime (this could have been done in a couple of weeks) – but, again, he did not do so – partly due to terrible advice, but also due to his own obsession with talks and deals.
Now it turns out (thanks to a leak by the dreadful “Economist” magazine) that the Trump plan for ending the war between the Kremlin and Ukraine was a basically pro UKRAINIAN government document, the “Economist” was so obsessed with sabotaging any possible agreement (although I believe that Mr Putin would never have agreed to this document – which even declares that Ukraine should enter the accursed European Union) that they have de facto admitted that their own previous reporting (and the previous reporting of the rest of the media) was a pack-of-lies. They reported, endlessly, that the Trump Administration had a pro Kremlin position on the war – the document (that they are so proud of having leaked – thus destroying any chance of peace) shows the opposite.
The “quote of the day” is crap, the article it is from is crap, and the man who wrote it is a cunt.
Finis.
“Why did you not use polite language?” – I already had, several times, explaining why the quote, and the article it is from, is the opposite of the truth.
But polite language did-not-register.
You can make arguments supporting all that Trump has done (albeit some of the arguments would be highly strained), except for his dealings with Russia and Ukraine.
There is no excuse for excusing Putin’s butchery.
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
Sure, that is indeed self evidently true, but I think the SQOTD is focused in the remarkable fact Trump would actually say…
But surely we have all realized that Trump is a major bullshitter. When it comes to Trump you should believe what he does, not what he says. In fact, I think that is a pretty good rule for judging all politicians.
I think Trump simply wants to be remembered as the Greatest President of All Time! And it would be fitting if the American Capitol was renamed as ‘Trump Town’, no doubt. Any other places to be renamed? Or incorporated into the USA? Paul, you’re always upholding Christian values, as do I- How many divorces has he had? He is hardly a good role model.
@Nicholas (Pro-Localism) Gray
He is hardly a good role model.
He is the President, not a role model. What matters is what he gets done.
In his first term aside from the Covid mess he did really well. This term with the middle east debacle, I’m afraid that will be his lasting legacy. I mean that, and facilitating a President Ocasio Cortez.
I have a pen, and I have a phone.
Everyone was OK with it when Obama did it, and everyone was OK with the covid-era TEAM BLUE governors acting like kings.
Everyone? Not in this parish 😀
Emphatically not ok with it in this parish.
You maybe, Perry, but a lot of the cosmotarians at places like Reason who want to be liked by the inside-the-Beltway crowd were much more silent on such abuses. They don’t want to be seen as déclassé like Trump and his supporters
This is actually an admirable statement, I wish everyone thought and behaved along this line.
Snag,
I can think of 1 excuse for excusing Putin’s butchery, viz,
“I am willing to spend $1 zillion of my taxpayers’ money to end Putin’s butchery, but not $1.1 zillion.”
I guess that statement is always true, for everyone…for certain values of ‘zillion’.
Nor need the ‘zillion’ be monetary. Maybe he thinks Ukraine is an unimportant backwater where disgusting Russian atrocities are not more important than, say, the Rwandan or Syrian ones were, or he thinks it’s really the EU’s business, or that China is what needs focus.
I don’t even necessarily think these things myself, and very much want Putin’s butchery to be ended, but istm that it would be entirely legitimate for whoever the American people chose as their president to think them.
The “mainstream” agenda is obvious – to remove what little remains of elected control of the government, whether it is by the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Israel, and-so-on, and replace it with all (all) power being in the hands of officials, “experts” and judges – with elected people just being puppets.
That “Reason” magazine SUPPORTS, rather than opposes, this agenda (coming out with the same establishment Talking Points that one would hear on the BBC or see in the newspapers – hardly “Samizdata” indeed the exact opposite) is what fills me with rage.
But if people object to the word “c@@@” I will replace it with two words – evil person.
Someone who supports the above agenda and comes out with the agitprop Talking Points (including the classic tactic of out of context quotes) to support that agenda – is evil.
Alisa, that is only admirable if you have an open mind, and are prepared to listen to others! If you never even bother to listen to others, that is called being pig-headed! (Not a compliment!)
And if you want another reason to hate Trump, google “International Liberty”. Dan Mitchell is normally happy to vote Republican, but the list of sleazy deals makes Hunter Biden look like a saint!