We Can't Count On Journalists To Tell The Real Truth-- How About Pusha T?

It's incumbent on journalists to never give up on pointing out that Trump never opens his mouth without lying and attempting to manipulate the public. Most Americans know he's a liar; a recent poll found that only 13% of Americans consider Señor Trumpanzee honest and trustworthy. And yet... his job approval rating has crept back up into the 40s. Are people not paying attention-- of what they gown unured to the constancy of lies?

Over the weekend Maggie Haberman of the "failing NYT" tweeted that she has "written stories about his lies, falsehoods, whoppers, half-truths, salesman-like stretches. The reality is that what he does can be hard to label because, as anyone who has worked for him will tell you in candor, he often thinks whatever he says is what’s real." Does that matter? As Joshua Benton wrote, "the statement is a lie, regardless of Trump's state of mind."

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, noted, also on Twitter that "in a large and important sense, not calling this lying is actually a form of misinformation or even at times questionably-motivated disinformation about what's really happening. BINGO! There is no overdoing it for reporters to pound away on the depth of untruthfulness and manipulationinherentin every statement, every tweet, every action. Nothing that comes from the Regime can be reported on without reference to lies.

For example Trump's despicable attempt to blame Democrats for separating migrant families at the border an attempt to rile up his primitivist base again. He claimed the disgusting and reviled practice was all about Democrats refusing to change a "horrible law" that he claimed, falsely, "mandated, as the Washington Post reported, "separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it’s also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation that advocacy groups and Democrats say is a crisis."

"Debase" is the word that described him and his governance. Have you been a fan of Pusha T? His new album, Daytona just dropped. Ironically produced by Trumpist Kanye, Pusha T is the Joni Mitchell of rap music. But more political.

I be thinkin', what would 2Pac do?

You be thinkin' what New Kids on the Block do
If you ain't drivin' while Black, do they stop you?

Will MAGA hats let me slide like a drive-thru?

Last week, Arizona Republican Jeff Flake delivered the commencement address at Harvard Law. The sentence that got reported in the news was "Our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the Constitution works." But there was more. He followed that line with another one that I'd like to hear Pusha T rapping about: "And our Article I branch of government, the Congress (that’s me), is utterly supine in the face of the moral vandalism that flows from the White House daily. I do not think that the founders could have anticipated that the beauty of their invention might someday founder on the rocks of reality television, and that the Congress would be such willing accomplices to this calamity. Our most ardent enemies, doing their worst (and they are doing their worst), couldn’t hurt us more than we are hurting ourselves... We may have hit bottom."

Maybe not. Norman Eisen and a legendary political figure when I was growing up in Brooklyn, Elizabeth Holtzman, penned an OpEd for USAToday last week, Donald Trump should not assume he's above the law. A sitting president can be indicted. Trump and Giuliani, they warn "would be unwise to assume presidents can't be indicted. The Constitution doesn't bar it and Rod Rosenstein could allow it... Giuliani’s assertion comes as President Trump faces at least four allegations of criminal misconduct. He and senior members of his campaign are under investigation for coordinating with Russians [something Pusha T accuses them of on the new album] to win the 2016 election. There is also substantial evidence that he obstructed justice by engaging in a pattern of conduct aimed at interfering with that investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of his former aide Michael Flynn.

While a president is entitled to special accommodation, the court has held that a president enjoys no special immunity from court jurisdiction and the legal process while in office.

If in fact a president is so consumed by a legal defense that he or she cannot lead the executive branch, there are other options. The vice president is constitutionally permitted under the 25th Amendment to assume the office when a president cannot perform its functions. If Trump finds himself in a position where he cannot faithfully execute his official duties, he may resign, or invoke the 25th Amendment and step aside temporarily.

Those options, while obviously unpalatable to the president, are consistent with a basic principle of our democracy: No person is above the law.

There is no explicit declaration in the text of our Constitution that provides immunity to the president while in office for crimes that he or she commits. In addition, while the text of the Constitution is silent on presidential immunity, it is explicit on congressional immunity. No member of Congress may be prosecuted for what is said during speech and debate.

Plainly, the Framers knew how to provide for immunity when they wanted to-- so their failure to do so for the president strongly implies that they didn’t believe it was appropriate in that case.

The closest the Constitution comes to addressing the matter is Article I, Section 3, which provides that after impeachment and removal from office, an individual “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”

This provision does not imply that prosecution takes place only when a president is out of office; it is simply intended to show that impeachment is not the only remedy for presidential crimes.

The opinion that a president cannot be indicted has been rejected by those who have held the solemn responsibility of deciding how to handle potentially criminal conduct by a president. Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor who took over the Watergate prosecution after Nixon fired his predecessor, Archibald Cox, ultimately asked a grand jury to refer evidence against the president to Congress.

However, that report said the grand jury was “deferring” to Congress’ “primary jurisdiction,” not that the grand jury was powerless to indict.

Furthermore, Congress had already begun impeachment proceedings, so it was clear that another branch of government would seriously grapple with holding Nixon accountable. (In addition, Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the major criminal prosecution in Watergate.)

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr also famously reported evidence of possible articles of impeachment against Clinton to Congress. However, Starr’s team concluded that “it is proper, constitutional and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties.”

That brings us to the ultimate reason that Giuliani and the president would be unwise to rely on the Justice Department policy. Even if Mueller did acknowledge that as special counsel he cannot indict the president, as Giuliani claims, that is not definitive. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may give him permission to override that limit.

The special counsel regulations and the authority Rosenstein enjoys as acting attorney general over this matter allow him to make that decision. Because of the legal infirmities of the OLC opinions we have described, that outcome cannot be considered off the table. Then it would be for the courts to resolve, and as we have shown, they have been hostile to similar presidential claims.

Make no mistake-- we are not suggesting that the forbearance on prosecution that Jaworski and Starr demonstrated is a bad model for Rosenstein and Mueller. The indictment of our democratically elected leader would be an unprecedented and somber moment for our democracy.

Instead, we are arguing that pursuing an indictment of a sitting president is a last resort that is entirely consistent with our constitutional values and democratic norms. It should be on the table not because it is a perfect option, but rather because it is preferable to a world in which our president is above the law and can engage in criminal conduct with impunity.