The Scorched Earth Defense: Trump's Lawyers Are Arguing For A Dictatorial Presidency
On Monday night, celebrity attorney and noted ambulance-chaser Alan Dershowitz took his turn in Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump and delivered a truly bizarre argument. Reading from a list of every President of the United States, Dershowitz noted that they had all been accused of abuse of power. In the reading, a few of the names stood out: John Adams. Andrew Jackson. James K. Polk. Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush.
John Adams, as the second president, was so insecure and terrified of his opponent Thomas Jefferson that he passed the Alien and Sedition Acts that gave him the right to deport his critics. Bolstered by the aristocratic Federalists, Adams nearly destroyed the country before the ink was dry on the Constitution.
Andrew Jackson used the presidency to carry out the systematic genocide of indigenous people.
James K. Polk manufactured a completely illegal war to invade Mexico in an act that stoked dangerous white supremacist attitudes that would eventually lead to the Civil War.
Richard Nixon, well, we’ll get to him in a minute.
Ronald Reagan lied to Congress over the Iran Contra Affair and George W. Bush, with the Neoconservatives guiding him, created a wholly illegal war that wasted the money and reputation of the United States while establishing an extralegal, unconstitutional surveillance/torture state that has led us down a dangerous path of destruction.
With Nixon, the case needs a little more examining. We’re all familiar with the term Watergate, but what some people might not know is that Nixon made a regular gambit of trampling on our laws and Constitution. As a candidate, he interfered in the Paris Peace Talks, an act of treason that delayed the end of the Vietnam War and led to thousands of American deaths. As president, he once drunkenly ordered a nuclear strike on North Korea his cabinet had to ignore, a small coup of its own. Later, he constructed a shadow intelligence community that targeted his enemies, spied on them, attacked them, and in some cases violated their civil liberties. When his operatives broke into the Watergate, they did so to place wiretaps that he hoped would hurt his Democratic opponent George McGovern.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dershowitz stood in the Senate and argued that to be president is to engage in illegal activity. All treaties and operations are to involve quid pro quo, and a president should weigh their own political fortunes alongside the fate and good of the country. What was even crazier was when Dershowitz claimed it was even more prudent should the president see their own political fortunes be intertwined with the good of the country.
This was Nixon’s reasoning. In the turbulent 60s and 70s Nixon believed his leadership was the only thing that could save the United States from ruin. This crisis, in his mind, necessitated a whole slate of unconstitutional acts because he needed to gain power, consolidate power, and retain power in the interest of America.
Dershowitz, whether intentional or the consequence of shabby lawyering, made a defense today of both Donald John Trump and Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Because Trump’s crimes are so blatant and obvious, because there is no arguing with them, no wrestling them, his lawyers are having to actively dissemble the law and precedent. It is a scorched earth policy that will leave this country in shambles if allowed to continue. If Trump is acquitted like this, every president who follows will be allowed to move outside the Constitution as long as they have at least 37 votes in the Senate. It all but liquefies our Constitution and establishes the Executive as an extra-powerful branch that exists outside the scope of the law or oversight.
Republicans operate, at this moment, from a place of strategy, a place of game theory. Unfortunately, this strategy and this game theory does not look beyond the immediate moment. As long as a victory can be had, the consequences don’t figure into the equation. What Dershowitz is now pushing is a nightmare, a society that operates specifically according to the whims of the powerful. We may already be there, but this gleeful jump into the abyss represents something new and something sinister. It’s the death of a republic, the eradication of law, the embrace of the nihilistic disease that coursed through the Nixon Presidency.
A disease that could consume us all.
Jared Yates Sexton is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. He’s the author of several books, including American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, which is forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. He is the co-host of the Muckrake Podcast and can be found on twitter @jysexton.