This is something that pundits will be pondering for a while. Donald Trump raised a lot of eyebrows when he said in the first place that he intended to be present for oral argument at the Supreme Court on his tariffs case. In a nutshell, the case will decide if tariffs powers extend to the president or if Congress retains the sole authority to impose tariffs under the Constitution. This could be the “most important case ever decided” as Trump is shilling it but not necessarily for the reasons he thinks. Here’s what Trump said on Truth Social.
You get the gist of where Trump is going with this. He wants supreme power in all things, basically, and this is just one more move towards that. But something happened in just the past few hours, because Trump has decided not to attend the Wednesday hearing. Could it be that Susie Wiles or somebody with some sense managed to reason with him on the optics of the matter? Very simply, a sitting president has never sat in on oral argument before the Supreme Court and likely the reason is that to do so would be construed as bullying the court. Daily Beast:
Last month, Trump told journalists that he might make the unprecedented decision to attend oral arguments in the case, Learning Resources, Inc. v Trump, according to Politico.
“It’s one of the most important decisions in the history of the Supreme Court, and I might go there. I really believe I have an obligation to go there,” he said.
Historians and lawyers who regularly appear before the court told Politico they did not know of any other occasions in which a sitting president attended a Supreme Court hearing.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told the outlet last week that attending would be a “mistake.”
“Some may interpret it as an attempt to put pressure on the justices, and I think if the justices receive it that way, I’m not saying they will or they won’t, but if they do perceive it that way, I think it will backfire,” he said.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut argued that attending the oral arguments would be an attempt to “bully the court” and agreed that it was likely to “backfire.”
Ever since a federal appeals court struck down a major part of the president’s tariff policy in August, Trump has talked about the case in apocalyptic terms, warning that without his tariffs, the nation could crumble.
His tariffs are going to be the ruination of the country, not its salvation. And once again I would like to point out the Smoot Hawley tariffs act, signed into law in 1930 for the purpose of protecting American farmers and manufacturers, only ended up worsening the Great Depression. That in itself ought to be a cautionary tale. But not to Trump, evidently, he’s hellbent on doing the same thing that was tried 95 years ago again and getting a different result this time.
It is a good move on Trump’s part not to show up at SCOTUS on Wednesday. Kudos to whomever talked him into it. Now hopefully the Supreme Court will make the prudent decision.
If Trumpler’s malodorous presence might have caused a backfire amongst the lickspittles of the Supreme Court, and hence caused those unworthies to decide in favor of our Constitution for once, then I’m sorry he’s chickened out. Left to their own corrupt devices, I have little confidence that they’ll “make the prudent decision.”
And I think we should all agree that Trump’s post is far too articulate for him to have written even part of it: the dead and still moving hand of Stephen Miller’s all over it.