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Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via NPR. |
From the TPM Morning Memo, a little vignette of presidential lobbying:
During an interview with CNBC this morning, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) alluded to an assurance he received from Trump — that the president would fix whatever issues Republicans had with the legislation he wants them to pass via executive action.
“We met with President Trump, and, you know, he did a masterful job of laying out how we could improve it, how he could use his chief executive office, use things to make the bill better,” Norman said Thursday morning. “We accepted the bill as is. What’s different is President Trump is going to use his powers.”
Oh well, in that case. If he's going to use "his powers". Superstrength? X-ray vision? Spidey sense? Can he grow instant wolverine claws?
I imagine he was talking about Article II of the US Constitution, of which he said during his first term, "I have an Article II that lets me do whatever I want." That's legally as ridiculous as it sounds—the specification of the "executive power" in the oath doesn't really mention powers so much as duties (to "faithfully execute the Office, and "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution), and the only explicit powers are those of making treaties, naming officers, and issuing pardons, all but the last with the advice and consent of the Senate. There's not even anything in Article II on the veto—that's in Article I, as a check on the Congress, as Article II has a congressional check on the presidency, in the procedure allowing them to be impeached and tried for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The way it really works in the system of checks and balances has traditionally been that each Branch can do whatever another Branch can't stop them from doing—Congress can stop the president through the impeachment process, the Supreme Court can stop him (if somebody sues) by examining the legality of his behavior, including whether it's constitutionally permitted or not. It's infuriating that we should even have to be talking about this, as if there were some possible universe in which Trump's assertion could be correct. But here we are.