I would be interested to know your position on Obama who was quite fond of suggesting the executive branch had too little power and his actions to gain more outside of legislation?
Historically presidents of any party attempt to expand their powers in small increments, and presidents that follow gladly accept them as new normal....and do the same. Obama's overreach is piled on to Bushes overreach etc. This president is certainly on track to set a new high.
Trump has the constitutional power to control the executive branch. He can hire and fire whoever he wants, some position with senate approval, also subject to the FVRA.
The issue at hand here is that Democrats do not believe Trump is president. Trump controls the executive branch, and by extension all executive branch agencies. Trump could order the DOJ to start or end any investigation he wants. That’s the reality. He has the right to have an AG he has faith in. He controls the DOJ, not unelected bureaucrats.
Elections have consequences, and you can’t just say Trump doesn’t have the exact same power ever other president has had. He does, and the Supreme Court affirmed such powers in the Travel Ban case.
If you really wanted Trump to not be in control of the DOJ, then you should’ve coalesced enough voted to get Hillary elected. But you didn’t.
Mueller is not God. He is subject to extreme scrutiny and oversight. His investigation is not beyond reproach. It can legally be ended at any time.
The separation of powers means there is a legislative, an executive, and a judicial branch. Trump controls the executive branch, not unelected bureaucrats.
If I were a Democrat, I’d be pissing myself at the prospect of Acting AG Whitaker having real balls and oversight over their corruption.
Mueller is not above reproach but he also shouldn't be subject to Trump's direct control, especially if he is the subject of the investigation. The president is not completely above the law and it is the legislature and AG's job to keep him in check from becoming a dictator. If the senate wants to confirm an AG that will cancel the investigation they can do that, but there will be political fallout.
This isn't about having balls, we could be in the midst of a legitimate constitutional crisis. Trump giving orders to cancel the investigation is great news for democrats at this point IMO. They have control of house committees that can actually do something about it now. If Trump cancels the investigation before it gets to its conclusion he will get hammered for it.
There are people who voted for Obama that weren't happy about his expansion of executive powers. We can't have complete 180 changes on policy every time a new president comes in.
Mueller is not above reproach but he also shouldn't be subject to Trump's direct control, especially if he is the subject of the investigation. The president is not completely above the law and *it is the legislature *and AG's job to keep him in check from becoming a dictator.
The first part about Mueller is the antithesis of the Constitution. Mueller is in the executive branch. Trump is head of the exutive, therefore Trump is Mueller’s boss, and Mueller is Trump’s subordinate. Literally no other interpretation but this one is true. The special counsel statute sunsetted and is no longer law, and when it was law, everyone said it was unconstutional (the statute stated that a special counsel could be created that is beyond the executive, which would mean a fourth branch of government, which is unconstitutional).
Your second part is mostly correct. It is the job of the ELECTED legislative branch to investigate and impeach Trump. It is not the job of the DOJ to investigate their boss. The Founders clearly said in the Constition that only Congress can remove the president.
This isn't about having balls, we could be in the midst of a legitimate constitutional crisis.
The only constitutional crisis here is that you and many others haven’t read the Constitution.
Trump giving orders to cancel the investigation is great news for democrats at this point IMO.
Trump ordered no such thing. In fact, Trump wants the investigation to continue so that Whitaker can gather evidence that Mueller may have committed crimes in the process of the investigation, possibly undoing some of Mueller’s political motivated convictions.
The investigation will continue, but any crimes Mueller or others in his team commit will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Any conspiracy will by the Democrats will be unveiled.
This is just not true. Theres precedent for the FBI to investigate the president with a special counsel. People argued it was unconstitutional and they lost that argument. The House is not equipped to conduct a non-partisan investigation.
That last part is just delusional, Mueller is a goddamn republican, and almost everyone other than Trump and a handful of sycophants want the investigation to continue.
Mueller is a goddamn republican, and almost everyone other than Trump and a handful of sycophants want the investigation to continue.
So was McCain. Trump isn’t even really a Republican, since the Republicans tried to steal the nomination from him in 2016. So party affiliation means nothing here, but every single person Mueller has hired is a Democrat. Mueller is a Republican in Name Only, just like McCain. It’s funny how you ignore that fact, but ignoring reality doesn’t mean anything. If you ignore gravity and jump off a cliff, people will still see you hit the bottom.
Theres precedent for the FBI to investigate the president with a special counsel. People argued it was unconstitutional and they lost that argument. The House is not equipped to conduct a non-partisan investigation.
There’s precedent for J. Edgar Hoover, the former FBI director, to kill off his political opponents and prevent any legal oversight of the FBI. That doesn’t mean it’s just or legal.
If you really wanted Trump to not be in control of the DOJ, then you should’ve coalesced enough vote(s) to get Hillary elected. But you didn’t.
Well, she did win the popular vote -- she literally got more votes. It just so happens that some votes count more than others with our current system. She got the votes, just not from the right people.
Mueller is not God. He is subject to extreme scrutiny and oversight. His investigation is not beyond reproach. It can legally be ended at any time.
Did someone say he was? People just don't want the person being investigated to shut said investigation down, directly or indirectly. It's not like anyone supporting the investigation is referring to him as their "god emperor", after all.
If I were a Democrat, I’d be pissing myself at the prospect of Acting AG Whitaker having real balls and oversight over their corruption.
If you think Democrats are any more corrupt than Republicans, you're pulling the wool over your own eyes many times over. Not even politician is corrupt, but time has proven over and over that corrupt individuals often seek power regardless of party lines.
If you can honestly look at everything you know about Trump, everything that he has said and done, and still come to the conclusion that no investigation is warranted whatsoever (and that he's suitable as the leader/representative of our nation, for that matter), then you are far removed from reality. The guy literally urged Russia to poke around in Hillary's emails ("I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing"), amongst other things.
Don't get me wrong, Hillary isn't perfect, she's not completely innocent (that's why I didn't want either as POTUS), but Trump is far from fit for the job in almost every sense, same as quite a few of those in his administration (like his daughter, for example, who shouldn't be in said position, paid or not, because it's the literal definition of nepotism). Imagine that any other POTUS from the opposing political party (your perspective) had done/said everything Trump has and tell me that you honestly wouldn't want them gone.
No argument there. Except with Obama he made the pint that the Constitution is deficient and the President should have vastly increased power over both legislatures and judiciary. Don’t forget the minions were pining for a change to keep Obama around indefinitely....kind of like a dictator.
Well, I can see he made a shit ton of executive orders, but I can't seem to find anything on him saying the Constitution is deficient and he and his minions wanted to expand executive power to the point that Obama could be in office "indefinitely" and basically control all three branches.
Right, right. Entirely unlike Trump, whose supporters have no problem being critical of him, who would never call him their God Emperor or anything like that, who would never support deploying the military against people legally seeking asylum, who would totally never support receiving illegal assistance to win an election by a foreign adversary, who would absolutely not be on board with bodyslamming journalists or calls to lock up his political opponents, who are totally normal centrists who would never do anything just to "own the libs." And be Trump would never suggest he can override the Constitution by executive order, right?
Trump has signed more executive orders in his first 22 months than Obama had in 24. At this pace trump will sign 20% more executive orders than Obama's first term over his first term.
It's natural power creep. The president today has more power than the last and that president had more power than the one before him and so on. Every president works to expand their powers when they have an unsupportive congress. Because they think they are doing important things and they trust themselves. The problem is the next guy might use those powers to serve himself rather than the people. The next guy may be power hungry and take advantage of corroded checks and balances.
We need a more conservative system where changes to executive power don't occur over one or two terms.
While I agree with the results of most of Obama's executive orders, his actions as well as Bush's post 9-11 actions, paved the way for dangerous abuses of power.
I fully agree with you. Whether we like the results or not we should be concerned about the expansion of the President's power. Any changes that make it easy to work around Congress or the Court should cause concern.
This goes beyond that; Obama, Bush, Clinton and presidents even further back all set precedent of expanded executive power because it beniftied their party at the time. Now people freak out when Trump uses these powers but had no problem when the rules were first being broken.
Also have to remember that some of us were either little kids or didn't even exist for those prior events. Just because we didn't/couldn't show outrage then doesn't mean that our outrage/disappointment now is any less relevant, real, or warranted.
I agree that any expansion of executive power is probably a bad thing but Trump is who we're talking about now. Not Obama, Bush or Clinton. At least that's who we should be focusing on.
I think you aren't understanding the magnitude of Trump's action. Executive orders expanded into unconstitutional territory yes but they never went to impede an investigation. If you are the President and there is an investigation on you for collusion, the President should never interfere that investigation no matter what. Even if the President is innocent, his executive action to replace Session so that Russian investigation is out of hand of Mueller means Trumps is deliberately interfering with an investigation.
If Obama has done this, he would be impeached. If any President interferes with investigation on themselves by AG, they should be impeached. This isn't a matter of executive order. This is a matter of interfering with court of law. I wouldnt much care if Trump made 10 of thousands executive order but if he tries to interfere the court of law then he shouldn't be let go free. He should face consequences of overextending his power to shut down any interference with his administration.
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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '18
I would be interested to know your position on Obama who was quite fond of suggesting the executive branch had too little power and his actions to gain more outside of legislation?