WTH is Going On With Presidential Immunity? Andy McCarthy Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2024
⏱️ 70 minutes
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Summary
In a spate of end-of-term decisions, the Supreme Court released its decision on the question of presidential immunity, ruling that the president has broad protections from criminal prosecution for “official acts,” a presumption of immunity for likely official acts, and zero immunity for private acts. Does this now mean that the U.S. now has a “king” as head of state, someone above the law, as many have implied? Can the president really release Seal Team 6 to kill political rivals without consequence? The answer is simple: No. Rather, the Court continued the job of rebalancing our Republic in favor of three branches, with Congress as the clear venue for trying any president for high crimes and misdemeanors. What does the ruling mean for Trump’s pending trials? And how is criticism of the Court eroding it as an American institution?
Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and the author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. Previously, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about. |
| 0:29.4 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:31.4 | And I'm Mark Dyson. |
| 0:32.8 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:34.3 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:36.2 | Mark, what the hell is not going on this week? |
| 0:39.5 | We're just careening from issue to issue in this country. My gosh, we just had a constitutional |
| 0:44.7 | crisis with the president of the United States who probably should be removed under the 25th |
| 0:49.7 | Amendment. And now we've got a Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that has roiled our political |
| 0:54.7 | system. What do you think, Danny? You know, I think that in a normal year, in a normal century, |
| 1:04.8 | we could have a really, really interesting conversation about the implications of this Supreme Court decision. |
| 1:14.8 | And, frankly, all of the Supreme Court decisions that have come down over the last couple |
| 1:18.5 | weeks, you know, for those of us who have watched the shape of our government change |
| 1:25.6 | over the last few decades and seen the growth of the administrative |
| 1:30.2 | state, the growth of the education department and the EPA and all of these fake commissions that have |
| 1:36.4 | been created, I think a lot of us would have looked at the court and breathed a sigh of relief |
| 1:41.8 | that, in fact, the court is returning our government to its constitutionally |
| 1:49.0 | mandated separation of powers and checks and balances, right? That is how I feel. That's exactly what it's doing. |
| 1:56.6 | Right. But we can't have that conversation because everything is so hopelessly politicized that the second you put the word Gorsuch or Alito on it or Trump on it, we can't have a normal conversation anymore. So we can't have a normal conversation anymore about what the court just did. |
| 2:13.1 | Well, what the court just did was the result of what you're describing. I mean, we've, you know, |
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