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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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Theodore Roosevelt referred to the presidency as a “bully pulpit” — but President Trump takes the concept to a new level, using his office to ridicule and insult his critics and opponents. On Tuesday, the Justice Department effectively said it would become his partner in this project, arguing that the president was acting within the scope of his official duties when he denied a sexual assault accusation in 2019, about an alleged incident in the mid-1990s. Trump said the woman who had accused him, E. Jean Carroll, was too unattractive for that to be plausible. “No. 1, she’s not my type,” he told a reporter in June 2019. “No. 2, it didn’t happen.”
Carroll sued Trump for defamation, saying the derogatory comments hurt her career, and the Justice Department now wants to take over the case. But under the legal theory that the department is advancing, not just the president but all federal officeholders would be free to lie with impunity about private citizens. Carroll’s defamation case would be dismissed because, if Trump’s comments were part of his official duties, the United States would become the defendant, and unlike individuals, governments must consent to being sued. But the United States has not agreed to be sued for intentional torts like defamation or intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Carroll’s suit would disappear, yet the episode would have implications that go far beyond the White House and its current inhabitant.
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The legal theory that the Justice Department is now pursuing is not just wrong: It is at total odds with another theory that the department has advanced to help the president avoid accountability, in a case involving whether Trump can block critics on Twitter. In that instance, the department has argued that the president can block people on the social media site because the president’s Twitter feed amounts to purely private speech, not official actions. That’s a bold claim — made bolder when the department insists that Trump’s comments about a private citizen — involving an episode from the 1990s — constitute official actions within the scope of his duties as president.
The end goal is the same, even though the methods vary: protect Trump at all costs. It’s one thing for lawyers in private practice to pursue contradictory and outlandish tactics like these. It’s quite another for the Justice Department to do so, at taxpayers’ expense.
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