Your Weekend Message From The Master

(Editor’s note: Charles Pierce writes daily at The Esquire Politics Blog at Esquire.com. He is an award-winning writer and author, most recently Idiot America. Every weekend, he sends out a weekly newsletter to subscribers, of which, I am one. From now through the election, I will post his weekend musings on here)

September 28, 2024

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a very interesting hearing. The committee met to discuss one specific Supreme Court decision: the eternally infamous 6–3 ruling in the case of U.S. v. Trump, through which Chief Justice John Roberts and the carefully manufactured conservative majority declared a sweeping definition of “presidential immunity” by which a president can commit actual crimes in office as long as they can be interpreted as part of his “official duties.” The title of the committee hearing was: ‘When the President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal’: The Supreme Court’s Dangerous Immunity Decision.”

The title, of course, hearkened back to the pivotal moment in David Frost’s series of interviews with Richard Nixon. The two men were discussing Nixon’s attraction to The Huston Plan, a radical program to suppress dissent. Huston’s plan was a horror show. It included suspension of Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. It sanctioned illegal wiretaps, burglaries, and, in one early draft, the establishment of detention camps in the western United States. Nixon approved the plan and sent it out to the entire federal law-enforcement and intelligence…