TRUMP - JUST SMOKE AND MIRRORS

While Joe Biden’s transformation from Joe Bader Ginsberg Biden to Joe George Washington Biden obliterated the giddy past week which begun with former President Trump’s near death experience and ended with theTrump/Vance three ring circus the latter does warrant some attention……

Following Trump’s assassination attempt with an AR 15 Semi Automatic Assault Rifle, he indicated that he would rewrite his acceptance speech at the Republican National Party Congress, (RNC), and call for national unity. In the next breath he nominated J. D. Vance who had just posted on Elon Musk’s X,“Today is not an isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”. The nomination of 39 year old Vance was evidence enough that whatever Trump may say, MAGA white authoritarianism extremism is here to stay. 

In fact the whole gaudy RNC Congress dystopian reality was a presentation of George Orwell’s, Nineteen Eighty - Four, which was written 75 years ago. In short, like everything about the man who in his last Presidency was going to build a wall which Mexico was going to pay for, is just “Smoke and Mirrors”. This Convention was all about El Duce himself, Donaldo J. Trump who is in the words of that iconic Sinatra song “ King of the Hill,, Top of the Heap, A number one”. But first to dispense with the VP nominee, J. D. Vance, who is Trump on steroids. 

ADVANCE NOTICE ON VANCE

Just to give the scoop on the newest version of the multiple retreaded Hillbilly J.D. Vance before getting onto Trump himself. JD, as he is affectionally known, in his weakly delivered prime time never ending “eulogy” to the Maestro took us down memory lane in order to show how old President Biden was. In so doing he forgot that his hillbilly history also reminded the long suffering audience how geriatric the other contender was.  He, JD, was just an ordinary graduate from Yale, who was a hedge fund manager and whose campaign was financed by billionaire Peter Thiel. Apparently JD, who aspired to be the spokesperson for the workers, wanted to bite the very hand that feeds him.

But Jay. H.El digresses as JD's epic was far more newsworthy for the missing blood and thunder red meat that got his youthful self on the double IMAX stage on night three of the Trump Convention. Missing was his sweeping cultural agenda - such as a national abortion ban and that middle class men should be able to earn enough for their “women” to stay at home. Then the tax cut for Peter and his good self which presumably could be balanced by axing Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act was not part of his oration. He also wants a weaker dollar for all those crypto guys sitting in the VIP boxes not to mention he and The Boss’s tariffs, (sales tax), that they want to put on all imported goods. 

Then forgotten in the endless litany of BS was his support of Project 25 supposedly to rid America of the Dark State which is out to get Trump. But enough already of the understudy and onto The King himself. The last word on Vance is that he opined to the American Conservative, that Trump was America’s Hitler.

EL PRESIDENTE - THE 45th THAT IS  - ON HIS BIG NIGHT, BY G-D’S GRACE

Hooray for Hollywood! What an irony, Hulk Hogan for heavens sake. If you are uninitiated, professional wrestling is as phony as Trump. In addition a 50 year old Kid Rock performing like he was at a Bar Mitzvah party. To put on this circus Trump is not really looking to expand his base. Nevertheless he claimed that he wanted to be a President for all Americans.

Reverend Franklin Graham, his daddy was the famous Billy, confirmed what Fox and all the right wing media had long ago concluded, namely that G-d was on Trump’s side. Trump himself did not have too many doubts about divine intervention in his bid to Make America Great Again, “I am not supposed to be here. I am supposed to be dead,…many people are saying it’s by God I am still here”

Notwithstanding his resurrection,Trump was not juiced up like in his rallies. He harped on the assassination attempt with all the theatrics. Not so subtly he confided that G-D backed his immigration policy and the bullet clipped his ear as he turned to look at the made up graph that proved that “Sleepy Joe” was allowing the illegals in to vote for him in November. 

The paranoia had to come sooner or later as he, with controlled anger, confronted the Democratic Party in their judicial  onslaught against him. Then he admitted that he was trying to buy votes. Then the BS followed big time as he bragged about his wonderful Presidency and Biden’s disastrous administration and the world mess which is all “their fault”, which he will fix up with everything else.The hyperbole had to come - the hundreds of thousands killed by the illegal immigrants and the197 percent of the jobs he created that the illegal immigrants have taken when they weren't busy killing everyone in-between their crime sprees. 

He asked the unenthusiastic crowd to “get excited”.He did mildly warm up towards the end which took forever to come. Before relief arrived the tissue of lies sprayed the arena, He really harped on and on about the invasion of immigrants. It was drill baby drill, deport the illegals and close the borders. The economy sucked big time. The Democrats cheated in the 2020 election. In order to wake up the crowd Trump adlibbed for a third of the 90 minutes including the bilge about the criminals, the murderers, the mental institutions and drug dealers being released into America. Venezuela was going to be the venue for the next RNC Congress!. He can stop wars and cure all diseases. He poured 250 million into Wisconsin not Biden’s Infrastructure Act.  Hannibal Lector as did “Crazy Nancy”, merited mentions. 

Some of this was patent cognitive decline. The crowd remained unenthusiastic, Eventually it mercifully came to an end about a week after he started. 

EL PRESIDENTE - THE 45th -  JUST SMOKE AND MIRRORS

The lies came out rata tat tat. The key message was the same old same old PLUS he now had proof that G-D had sent him to save America. Like “The Savior” he was being martyred to save them. 

As a matter of mundane politics the 45th President  did not touch on abortion nor plans for that “Highly respected by all jurisprudence experts, Judge Eileen Cannon’s” possible appointment to the Supreme Court. No mention of the political prisoners that the Biden Justice Department has prosecuted and his promise to let them out. As for Project 25, written by a 140 members of his former administration which included his promise to axe all civil servants of the “deep state” and replace them with Trump loyalists, not a word. In case anyone doesn’t believe he is capable of the latter that is what he did with the whole RNC infrastructure and put in his daughter in law in charge as Chairperson to boot. 

Trump didn’t detail that his massive tariff on all imported goods was inflationary as economists had forecast. Nor did he elaborate that his tax plan was only for the rich and would Increase the deficit even more than he had in the first four years.  His axing of regulations would expose the masses to risk and allow big business to ride rough shod over citizenry. He didn't offer his previous explanation for the record breaking stock market which he had claimed was in anticipation of his Presidency. Nor did he offer any theory as to why if he was still President he was running to remove Biden!

He ignored the self dealing and grift he and his family are involved in. Two billion for Jared and a Trump Hotel in Saudi Arabia for starters. Or how his gullible followers have forgotten his campaign promises back to 2015 that he didn’t need any money for the campaigns because he was “really rich”. Nor did he bother to explain how he was creaming their contributions for his massive army of lawyers who were successfully making a mockery of the justice system.

Like abortion, which was dealt with in the weakest RNC platform motion in decades, in the hope that everyone would forget his boast that he delivered the justices that axed abortions, he didn’t mention his unconditional support for guns. That was jolly decent of him, bearing in mind that he was shot with an AK rifle that the Democrats have tried to ban for ever. 

Jay H. Ell could go and on but the assassin’s bullet that nearly brought him to his Maker hadn’t altered his world view one jot. Everything about Trump is just “Smoke and Mirrors”.

Just a few of his choice quotes to end this off. 

‘They’re not after me. They’re after you. And I just happen to be standing in their way.”

“In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add I am your warrior,  I am your justice. and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution”.

'“ They, (Illegal immigrants), are poisoning the blood of our country”.

“I will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”.

“Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath  That’s gonna be the least of it” 

“If this election isn’t won, I am not sure that you’ll even have another one in this country”.

 For Trump there is not one America, His war is not with the evil empires of Russia, Iran and North Korea. His war is with his fellow countrymen who don’t want to install him as a King. He is no patriot, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

It would be the end of the day if “law and order” Trump was re elected. Don’t forget he is the twice impeached, convicted of 24 felonies, four times indicted, declared a rapist by a federal judge, had his fake university closed, his charitable organization shut for donating other donors’ money to himself, fined 350 million dollars for his fraudulent Trump company that has been criminally convicted and is the alleged instigator of an insurrection to overthrow the Constitution of America. It is appropriate that Trump's opponent will be a prosecutor. 

Even Moses had to pass the torch to Joshua. 

Funny how Wall Street is so readily funding Trump/Vance who argue that they are wholeheartedly against it. 

It is going to become real ugly fast. 

BIDEN’S HUBRIS - A MOVIE RERUN

The 2020 USA Presidential election was a referendum on Donald Trump. The hope has been to repeat that scenario in 2024. However the race is turning to a poll on Joseph Biden as a result of the fears he realized in a debate between the two geriatric candidates. The majority of voters don’t want either. It stands to reason that if any reasonable candidate from either party were to run the remaining geriatric in the race would be at a distinct disadvantage. In that regard it won’t be a candidate from the Republican Party as Trump is the Party. The Democrats could grab the narrative from the smirking authoritarian sociopathic 45th President who is even more impaired.  Biden, through his hubris is ignoring history where leaders fail to recognize the destructiveness of their own perceived omnipotence. This is not the Biden of yore. Jay H. Ell has seen this movie before in his native South Africa and fears a rerun. 

JOE BIDEN  - RERUNNING THE MOVIE

Joseph Biden’s insistence, for whatever reasons, that he is the only one who can run against Trump and beat him is a movie Jay H. Ell has seen before. Apartheid, the post holocaust crime against humanity, would never have happened in South Africa if a forgotten leader with similar national and international credentials as Biden, hadn’t exhibited the same arrogance and lack of insight at an inflection point in South African history. As frail as Biden is he is aware enough to know that the debate he delivered, way past his admitted bedtime, disqualified him in the current crossroads in American and world history as a candidate to easily beat the existential threat to mankind, Donald J Trump.

 The majority of Democrats want him out of this race and 53 percent of the electorate believe that his age is a bigger disadvantage to the Presidency than the 43 percent that argue that Trump’s criminal convictions are. Seventy - five percent of the electorate claim he is too old. Biden challenges the polls that say that no president with his low approval rating, 36 percent, has ever been re elected. In 2020 he was way ahead of Trump in July now he is behind.

DENIAL IS THE COIN OF THE REALM FOR POLITICIANS AND EVERYBODY ELSE

It is myth to believe history will judge a self centered Biden harshly rather they will just forget about him. Denial is a mechanism not only of politicians who want to romanticize even recent history, but of the electorate as well. Trump’s whole schtick is predicated on denial and lies. He claims he will “Make America Great Again”, Again, referring to a mythical past that he didn’t define or achieve last time out. Everyone in the “GOP” appears to have forgotten that he promised in 2016 in to build a wall that Mexico was going to pay for. Memory even fails recalling the 1,200,000 Covid deaths and the greatest increase in the deficit in any presidency in history, close on 8 trillion dollars. 

Although World War 11 is in the living memory how many Americans are aware of the massive Nazi presence in the country during that war and for years after? If you asked a focus group whether they could articulate why Senator McCarthy was infamous how many would know? (For the record he was an active Nazi sympathizer who sort to cover up major Nazi atrocities in addition to his witch hunt of anyone left of center. All this is detailed in Rachelle Maddow’s “Prequel” and her podcast “Ultra”.

 Biden if he remains on the ticket, whether he ekes out a victory against Trump, which will be challenged creating another constitutional crisis to be resolved by the hairy Supreme Court, or loses ,will be erased from memory notwithstanding his transformative presidency and his stellar career as a public servant. Lyndon Baines Johnson would have been forgotten if he would have attempted a second term after his disastrous handling of the Vietnam war. He knew when to hold em and when to fold em. Rather he is revered for his landmark transformative Civil Rights legislation. 

So the movie has been played over and over. But back to Jay. H. Ell’s experience of how apartheid may have been avoided had the South African Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, not ignored what his advisors were telling him. 

WHO WAS SMUTS AND WHAT WAS HIS MOVIE?

Are you aware of the shocking result of the 1948 South African election that heralded the apartheid era? Let Jay H. Ell remind you. As a seven year old child he witnessed it all being a member of a politically conscious family and it is indelibly sketched in his memory. Smuts lost a 1948 election he could have easily won and then threw away an opportunity to still remain in power all due to his hubris.  But first who was Smuts? He is not remembered like Mandela or even Bishop Tutu or De Klerk who were three of South Arica’s four Nobel Laureates for Peace. In fact history has regarded him unfairly as an agent of apartheid.

The 77 year old Field Marshall Jan Smuts was a remarkable guerrilla and conventional warrior, politician, statesman and philosopher who failed his most crucial historic test through arrogance and, who knows, elderly cognitive dysfunction not recognized in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century. However he too like Biden certainly was enough in touch with reality to make informed choices. For the whole sorry saga on this catastrophe see, “Jan Smuts, The Man Who Might Have Prevented Apartheid”, I Write What I Like, January 22, 2014.

Smuts towered over South African history in the first half of the twentieth century but more significantly in the British Commonwealth which was the most powerful entity of that period. He was the most influential member of the British war cabinet in WW1. In WW11. Churchill informed King George that should anything befall him Smuts should be made leader of the allied world in his place. In other words a South African was to head the British war cabinet. Albert Einstein wrote to him in 1936 confiding that his book “Holism and Evolution” was the most influential work in his thinking. He was the only statesman to have been involved in the founding of The League of Nations and the United Nations Organization. 

Most significantly in 1948 he was about to lead South Africa and set an example for the world in fighting segregation. Yet through arrogance he lost the opportunity and is confined to the dustin of history. He allowed the introduction of apartheid and the authoritarian and abrogation of the rule of law that was inherent to its application. As someone whose life was overshadowed by that decision and who was white and not subject to the harsh lash of discriminatory policies it was a living nightmare. It is a movie that Jay H. Ell would not want to see again. So how can it be prevented?

WHAT HAS BEEN THE FALL OUT OF THE DEBATE

It took 8 days for a Biden response. Eight days as the punditry descended on the Biden candidature like a hurricane. He did have a rally in North Carolina the day after where the faithful cheered, but for the rest a stoney silence.  His most loyal backers such as Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times more in sorrow than in anger said he had to hang up his Presidential badge and call it quits. There was also justifiable rage as to how his enablers had misled the electorate that he was alert and with the program. Stories abounded that manifestations of his debate behavior had been on the increase. 

So before damage control began in earnest he met with his wife Jill, son Hunter and the rest of the family. The latter never advised him to go back to Delaware like he said he would when he decided to run in 2020  -“You were always going to be transitional”. In so doing they would have gently ushered him out. But no way. Wife Jill had even after the grossly impaired debate publicly congratulated on him exclaiming, “You did such a great job. You answered every question”. So having got the go ahead from the family who had put his feelings ahead of America’s democracy and the free world’s future, they handed him over to his other enablers to face the world.

An interview without a teleprompter was scheduled with George Stephanopolous of the ABC  network. Biden’s answers were in many ways incredulous. He simply disagreed with the polls and his rock bottom approval ratings. They just weren’t true. He wasn’t going to undergo neurological and cognitive testing that might well assuage public opinion.  Besides denying reality and arguing that he had the best chance of beating Trump, there were two answers that produced a sense of shock. When asked whether he had watched the debate, that vacant look of the debate night flashed onto the screen and with hesitancy he muttered, “I don’t think so”. He didn’t know whether he had watched the most consequential encounter in Presidential debate history. If that was true then his team were guilty of gross negligence. Then he responded that he wouldn’t feel bad if he lost to Trump as long as he had given it the good old college try!

The Democratic candidate then took to the road and held donor meetings and a couple of rallies where he was cheered on by the faithful as he stated bizarrely, with no apologies to Trump, that “the party elites” were trying to run him out of his candidature. In an attempt to put a lid on the simmering Democratic legislators calling for him to drop out, he wrote a public letter telling them to shut up.He said the quiet part aloud telling them if they didn’t like the idea of his persistence they could challenge him at the Democratic Convention The leadership were in no hurry, also being anxious on the eve of him hosting a NATO  meeting not to render him impotent. 

Meanwhile from Trump there was an eerie silence. He had in one of his word salads way back offered that he was going to lose the debate on purpose to prevent the Democrats from dropping ”Sleepy Joe” and substituting another candidate. Meanwhile his team are busy preparing ads with clips from the debate and the interview.

So how might this end?

HOW MIGHT THIS END?

The two campaign chiefs of the last two Democratic Presidents, James Carville and David Axelrod both believe that Biden will lose to Trump  The two Democratic politicians that are central to the 46th President’s fortunes are Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn. Both have been very circumspect. Significantly the pair, have suggested that “Should Biden drop out there should be a mini Primary’ or words to that effect. They fear that the conventional wisdom to hand the candidature to Vice President Kamala Harris would have the impression that a candidate was been foist on the Party. Without Clyburn Biden would have not been President so the fact that he is publicly even hinting at the possibility that Biden might not see it to election day is dramatic. 

The Democratic candidates for down ballot elections are fearful that Biden might kibosh their leads in the polls. A crucial factor in American politics that doesn’t enter into other countries’ electoral processes, are the money donors. Without them a presidential candidate is sunk - not the grass roots type  but the ‘heavies’. A number of the latter have called for Biden’s ouster. Carville believes that they together with the Democratic elders pressure will drive Biden out. It is not a question of if but when. 

This is being written before Biden’s press conference and his interview with Lester Holt of NBC but nothing can change the reality that with Biden at the top of the ticket Trump  and his party can clean sweep the Legislature and the Presidency. George Clooney saw it months ago. Jeffries, Schumer, Pelosi and Clyburn need to take Biden on if necessary and threaten a Convention challenge. 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

While Jay H. Ell will pull the lever against Trump whoever the candidate might be, Biden could help his PTSD by not rerunning the movie .

THE MAGA ROBERTS AND TRUMP COURTS

The earthquake rulings from the MAGA Roberts/Trump Supreme Court have shaken the whole country. The Court's opinion which grants blanket immunity to the Presidency for criminal actions in his “official” capacity has diminished  former President Trump's legal jeopardy considerably. The Court's dramatic decision turns one of the pillars of democracy on its head, that no person is above the law. This particularly so as it was made in the context of Trump's attempted maneuvers to overturn a "free and fair" election.  

Chief Justice Roberts has navigated the Supreme Court coup d’ etat skillfully since his ascendancy to the Court in 2007. While claiming to be an“Originalist”, interpreting the Constitution as it was originally written, he has merely used that argument as a rationale for many fundamentalist rulings. On the contrary they have often acted in opposition to the intent and substance of the Constitution making a mockery of the John Locke and Thomas Paine Age of Enlightenment inspired Declaration of Independence. America now has two kings - Donald Trump and John Roberts.

 

Anyone who believes theTrump era will not be historically significant is in blind denial. Not only will he be revolutionary politically, his legacy will live on for decades through his appointments to the Supreme Court. The impact of the Supreme Court on the American landscape had already been dangerously altered in the decades previously by the Robert’s court. Then Trump aided and abetted by the “GOP” Senate majority leader. Mitch McConnell unashamedly effected a coup d’etat of the democratic American order via the Supreme Court. The Robert’s Court became the Trump Court with the Chief Justice acting out his wildly revisionist agenda.. 

The Supreme Court court sessions running up to the 2024 election have benefited Trump royally. Whether by accident or design The Court has enacted the MAGA agenda as articulated by Trump and detailed in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 25.

 So first let’s put the Supreme Court’s role in historical context. Jay H. Ell will argue this is counter to the Constitution, The Declaration and War of Independence. 

THE SUPREME COURT, THE CONSTITUTION AND THE DECLARATION AND THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

Democracy at the best of times is a messy business. Every country has it’s own system based on common law and/or a constitution. A democratic state has two foundational features -elections which decide who the leaders are and provide accountability and the rule of law. American Democracy has as its basis a Constitution which was created with checks and balances and relies for its ultimate interpretation by the Judicial Branch as enunciated in Article 111, “The Judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts….September 1787.  The latter provision in the belief that the arbiters of the norms of society and the legislation by which it should be ruled would be wise and impartial “men”. The Founders laid out the formula of Presidential nomination and Senate confirmation with a view to obtaining an “independent judiciary free from partisan pressures’. So much for the Founders and their objective.

It is fair to claim that the zeitgeist behind the establishment of the Constitution was  the 1776 Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson ‘We hold these truths to be self evident that all men were created equal, that they were endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Every Founder and the Legislature at the time knew that was aspirational. Jefferson himself was a slave owner. The Constitution counted slaves as three fifths of a person in order to allow the Southern Staes more representation. It outlawed the stopping of the slave trade till after twenty years. 

It is important to note that in “The Indictment” section of “The Declaration” was all about the tyranny of the unelected King George, “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the absolute tyranny over these state. To prove this let these facts be submitted to a candid world".

So it was obvious that the Founders thought the world would change - a point that the current Trump Supreme Court does not take. The Founders even left open axing the slave trade after 20 years! The very fact that there were progressive amendments to the Constitution is testimony to the fact that the interpretation of the originating work was just that, a work in progress.

THE AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION

All in all there are 27 Amendments. Even the early ten - “The Bill of Rights” were enacted a few years after the date of the ratifying of the Constitution.  The 12 that constitute the Bill were completed in 1804. It took 60 years and a Civil war to achieve the aspiration to rid the country of slavery and the next 3 amendments, 13th, 14th and 15th  were written into the Constitution over a period of 6 years ending in 1870. The Era of Reconstruction. What followed nearly 50 years later was The Progressive Era, the 16th through the 19th Amendments. These included the decision to vote for Senate members, the establishment of income tax, prohibition, which was to be reversed 14 years late in 1933, and most importantly the right of women to vote. 

The Modern Era spanned from 1933 to 1992, the 20th through to the 26th Amendments. Again these indicated progress. The landmark decision ridding the country of poll tax which had crippled the right of African Americans to vote was passed in 1964 accompanied by legislation championed by the Lyndon Johnson Presidency. In 1971 with 18 years being the draft age for the Vietnam war the consensus was to at least allow those who were putting their lives on a line the right to vote. 

So, as the Amendments illustrate The Constitution is a living document not to be interpreted at the time the original was written. Even the Founders shortly after the inception sought to modify it immediately as that era demanded. The arcane fundamentalist “originalist” philosophy of The Robert’s court which morphed into The Trump Court is merely a subterfuge to turn back the clock - a judicial attempt to make America great again. 

There is little doubt that the American Constitutional amendments have been driven by Jefferson’s directive even if the Supreme Court is stuck in the 18th Century. So onto some examples of how this all works in the real world.

THE ROBERTS  SUPREME COURT 

John Roberts was elected to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by George W. Bush in 2007. The Republican majority of only one partially restrained his Court till 2017, the beginning of the Trump Court. The impediment to Robert's aspirations being largely as a result of Justice Kennedy who was “liberal” on social issues. Nevertheless he piloted a number of decisions which changed American society.

There can be no more important activity than the equality between citizens on the issue of voting and influencing the outcome of elections. As regards the latter an organization called “Citizens United” argued that the bipartisan McCain - Feingold legislation on controlling the swabs of money in elections was "unconstitutional". The bipartisan legislation had sought to limit corporate spending. The Roberts Court decided that corporations were “individuals” and had Freedom of Speech, First Amendment rights, so that could spend unlimited money on elections, any time any place. Hence the result in this election where, for example, Trump has offered the oil companies to axe environmental legislation for a billion dollars, Miriam Adelson for support of Israel has given a 100 million and Timothy Mellon a day after Trump’s conviction of 34 felonies donated 50 million to a PAC supporting Trump.

In 2013 the Roberts Court gutted the the Voting Rights Act which was an outcome of the Amendment to the Constitution which ensured non discrimination against African American voters. The Southern States that had been found guilty of preventing their vote had to obtain preclearance from the Justice Department for any changes in voting procedures. Roberts et al wished discrimination away and endless attempts have subsequently followed to suppress minority voting. 

THE TRUMP COURT

Trump promised the Evangelical base Justices that would deliver on social issues and his corporate money backers that regulations that held them to account would be axed. His Court delivered and is still delivering. The most devastating ruling was the elimination of access for abortion, (2017 Dobbs decision), a 50 year old precedent under the Privacy Amendment. This has resulted in chaos in pregnancy care. Under threat is contraception and InVitro Fertilization. There is an 1861 Supreme Court ruling, (Comstock), that can easily be interpreted to ban contraception and invitro fertilization. In 2014 The Roberts Court in The Hobby Lobby decision had already given the latter the right to deny contraception cover in their insurance program

Second Amendment rights, guns,, received a massive hurrah when the Trump Court in their Bruen decision they basically opined "anything goes" as far as gun ownership was concerned. However for whatever reason they conjured up an exception not to allow domestic abusers to have the usual arsenal available to every citizen. The Roberts Court had already maintained that The Constitution didn’t mean what it said, namely that there needed to be “a well armed militia" rather than ordinary citizens could arm themselves to the teeth, (Heller). 

Yet another revolutionary ruling kiboshing a 40 year old Law, the landmark Chevron opinion which clarified the role of Federal Agencies in making regulations. It stands to reason that Congress would not be able to pass every regulation in relation, for example, to the Federal Drug Agency. The latter has panels of experts and an overall expert body to see to the registration and monitor the safety and efficacy of medical treatments. The Trump Court annulled that practical arrangement in an angry judgement. The overall upshot will be that business will be no longer subject to regulations unless The Court so decides. The Trump Court earlier had done away with Quasi Judicial Courts, which again are experts adjudicating within their scope of expertise. 

Having done away with the ability as to what Trump defines as “The DeepState”.,they left the worst for last.

TRUMP IS KING

Having expedited a hearing as to whether Colorado’s removal of Trump from the ballot for causing an insurrection very rapidly, they took six months to decide that virtually all “Official” actions of a President” are Constitutional. The upshot of this is many of the illegal acts that the 45th President executed are subject to immunity. The three liberal Associate Justices issued a vitriolic minority opinion claiming that they had anointed Trump a “King”. They maintained further that the Court, “..had reshaped the Presidency and made a mockery of the Constitutional Law that claimed that no one is above the law”.

Moreover they further made life much easier for the “MAGA King” in that he could have the unpopular anti abortion issues both ways.  While he still could take credit for the end of Roe v Wade, they deferred two outcomes which he would have to defend, namely not deciding whether the abortifactant, mifepristone should be withdrawn from use and whether emergency care physicians had to stabilize severely ill patients with threatened abortions. The latter in States that said they could only effect care in the saving of a life. Both matters will re appear in The Trump Court’s docket after the election. 

CORRUPTION

Financial malfeasance has dogged the Court particularly in relation to Justices Thomas and Alito both of whom have accepted largesse from those with interest in the outcome of litigation relating to big business. There was objective evidence that both should also have recused themselves involving the January 6 insurrection as their wives had supported the contention that Trump had won the 2020 election. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has extensively documented the millions of dollars spent in the promotion of Trump nominees, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett to The Court. He subsequently published his findings in a book entitled, “The Scheme”. 

The Trump Court reversed a lower court's conviction of a mayor who had been given 13, 000 dollars following awarding a major contract to a local business man. The Trump Court reasoned that the money was not given before the decision and therefore could not be a bribe. It should rather be regarded as a gratuity and therefore was not illegal. Justice Ketanje Brown in her dissent said the Court’s reading, “was absurd and that only today’s court could love”. 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Once again the Court have conveniently abandoned their “Originalist" stance for creating constitutional law that flies in the face of the cardinal intent of the Founders whose central gripe was an unaccountable undemocratic king who was not subject to the rule of law.

President Biden could order the Navy Seals to eliminate a clear and existential danger to democracy, Donald Trump. This would be an “official act” not subject to criminal law.

The precedent of The United States v Richard Nixon has been annulled. President Nixon’s claim in the aftermath of his resignation, has been validated namely that“When the President does it, that means it is not illegal”.

If the Democrats clean sweep all three branches of government they should in addition to enshrining into law some of the rights taken away by the Roberts/Trump Courts also enlarge it. As 71 percent of the Americans don’t believe in Presidential immunity this is bound to be a central campaign issue.