I Doubt Historians Will Debate Who Was Worst-- Trump Or Barr

Last week, Ron Reagan, Jr. said that his father would have seen Trump as a "traitorous president who is betraying his country. The Republican party at this point, for a whole host of reasons to do with Donald Trump, is an entirely illegitimate political party just made up of a bunch of sycophantic traitors mouthing Kremlin propaganda to defend this squalid little man who is occupying the White House..." As I mentioned yesterday, one good thing about the impeachment trial is that millions of Americans now know that there are 53 senators who need to be defeated for reelection-- 19 of them this coming November. Adam Schiff is doing a good job in laying out the parameters of the impeachment case, but the impeachment case only goes an inch deep into the sewer that is Donald J. Trump. As Charles Fried, one of the quintessential Reaganites-- and about a million degrees to the right of Ron Reagan, Jr.-- said this week in an interview for Newsweek, Trump is "perhaps the most dishonest person to sit in the Oval Office... capable of doing serious damage." That said, Fried identifies someone at least as dangerous to America-- Bill Barr (the Attorney General whose confirmation was guaranteed when Trump-leaning Democraps Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Doug Jones (AL) and Joe Manchin (WV) crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans--and when Maine Republican Susan Collins forgot she's supposed to be pretending she's a moderate).

Fried was Reagan's solicitor general from 1985 to 1989, urging the Supreme Court "to overturn the reigning liberal orthodoxies of his day-- on abortion, civil rights, executive power and constitutional interpretation. But the Trump Revolution has proven a bridge too far... Fried has broken ranks." Contrasting one of his mentors, former SCOTUS justice John Harlan with Trump, Fried said "[I]t's unimaginable to think of him speaking the way that this hoodlum speaks. This is not conservatism."

Newsweek reporter Roger Parloff continued: "As disgusted as he is by President Donald Trump, Fried is, if possible, even more dismayed by William Barr, Trump's current attorney general, for having stepped up as Trump's chief apologist. Fried says of Barr. 'His reputation is gone.'" Here are some excerpts from that interview, beginning with an intro by Fried, explaining why people are right to think of Trump as a fascist:

Charles Fried: The first thing, which sets the context, is the rhetoric of the president, both when he was running and ever since. The famous statement that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. The assumption he makes is that by virtue of the November election of 2016, he has a mandate to be the leader of the country. The commander in chief of the country. The German word is fuhrer. The Italian word is duce.

He talks about loyalty. He asks for loyalty. To what? To him personally. Not to the law, which he is supposed to be faithfully executing. This comes up over and over again. Where an official-- for instance, the whistleblower-- following the law, performing a legally defined duty, following a chain of command, does something that undermines Trump's personal situation, he defines it as espionage, as sabotage. He looks back to the days when people could get shot for doing that...

Newsweek: Amazon Web Services alleges in a recent lawsuit that it lost a $10 billion defense contract because the president interfered with the impartial bidding process. It alleges he did that to punish Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, whose political coverage he hasn't liked. The government denies the allegations, but assuming for the sake of argument that Trump really did that, would Trump, as the unitary executive, be beyond sanction, because he's the head of the Department of Defense and Department of Justice.

Fried: There are laws about this. The laws are meant to prevent what happens in Third World countries and in gangster regimes, where contracts are given to your friends and denied to your enemies. That's what competitive bidding is for. Interference with that is unlawful. In any case, to do that for political punishment is, again, corruption and, again, impeachable.

Newsweek: Do you know Bill Barr?

Fried: No, I think I met him in the corridor once.

Newsweek: Did you support him for attorney general this time?

Fried: No, I did not.

Newsweek: Why?

Fried: Because I'd heard things that led me to believe his principal concern is power.

Newsweek: Executive power or personal power?

Fried: Both. But to read this-- [pointing to the text, lying on his desk, of the keynote speech Barr gave before the Federalist Society in November]-- is shocking. Let me just give you a few examples. He says that "immediately after President Trump won election, [opponents] inaugurated what they called 'The Resistance,'" instead of the "loyal opposition, as opposing parties have done in the past." [Barr said this was "very dangerous-- indeed incendiary. ... They essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government. ... In waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of 'Resistance' against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law."]

He seems to have forgotten that it's [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell who said [in 2010] "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President [Barack] Obama to be a one-term President." At another point in this speech he said that, yes, the Senate has the power of advice and consent [on presidential nominees], but they shouldn't be obstructing the process. But look at what McConnell did with [Supreme Court nominee] Merrick Garland.

Barr knows all of this. And he's supposed to be a very moral man, and so on and so forth. But to be the apologist for perhaps the most dishonest person to ever sit in the White House? I mean, dishonest in the sense that he lies the way other people breathe. You would think that the project of protecting presidential powers would provide a worthier subject than that, particularly for a supposedly honorable man. But the fact is, all the honorable people in the Cabinet have left. And what you have left is people who are willing to say anything, as Barr is. And you saw the way he treated the Mueller Report, which he misrepresented, because that is what his boss would have wanted.

You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. His reputation is gone.

Newsweek: Barr argued in his Federalist Society speech that courts have been encroaching on executive powers. He asserted that courts should not even be reviewing the president's refusals to comply with Congressional subpoenas. "How is a court supposed to decide," he said, "whether Congress's power to collect information in pursuit of its legislative function overrides the president's power to receive confidential advice in pursuit of his executive function? Nothing in the Constitution provides a manageable standard for resolving such a question."

Fried: Does that mean the president is supposed to say what the law is? In Marbury v. Madison [in 1803], Chief Justice [John] Marshall said, "It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is." This is a rant. This is not a reasoned statement. And Barr knows all this. He's a very intelligent man, who's willing to say anything.

Newsweek: One remaining question about Barr. It's been reported that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are criminally investigating Rudolph Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer. Almost any scrutiny of Giuliani will draw into scrutiny of Trump's conduct, too. Are you confident in Barr's willingness to let the prosecutors go wherever the facts lead them?

Fried: I don't think he would dare to interfere. I'm sure he would dearly love to. But I don't think he would dare to. He's a smart man...

Newsweek: I assume you think it was right to impeach Trump.

Fried: Indeed.

Newsweek: And that he should be removed?

Fried: Indeed.

Newsweek: Some people argue that we're near an election. Maybe we should let the electoral process take its course.

Fried: First of all, every day that a corrupt president sits, he is capable of doing serious damage. The other thing is: now that the House has issued-- to my mind-- correctly formulated articles of impeachment, the Senate's duty is to try that. Trial means fair consideration of whether the charges are justified and, if so, so to state. Whether it's January 2020, or November 2020, or, indeed, December 2020.

Newsweek: Some argue that the current impeachment articles against Trump are insufficient because they don't specifically allege a crime. What would your response be?

Fried: The [Constitutional] text is too general and the precedents too few to permit a confident answer. I don't believe the Constitution requires the charge of a specified federal crime, of which, at the time of the framing there were very few. What Trump is charged with is analogous to bribery-- extortion, if not technically so. Here again is Jackson in the Steel Seizure Case: "Just what our forefathers did envision, or would have envisioned had they foreseen modern conditions, must be divined from materials almost as enigmatic as the dreams Joseph was called upon to interpret for Pharaoh. A century and a half of partisan debate and scholarly speculation yields no net result, but only supplies more or less apt quotations from respected sources on each side of any question. They largely cancel each other."

Newsweek: Some argue that the current impeachment allegations against Trump don't "rise to the level" of an impeachable offense. Your view?

Fried: I don't agree. They argue a serious, concerted and corrupt use of presidential power for personal political gain.

Newsweek: Some argue the allegations haven't been adequately proven.

Fried: I don't understand how much more proof you want. But, in any event, additional proof is available. It's just that the president will not supply it. That is an additional grounds for impeachment. He has issued blanket orders not to cooperate in any respect by anyone. Now there are all kinds of valid privileges. And those could be invoked. But a blanket privilege because this is an "illegitimate process"? Well, he doesn't get to say that. That blanket order is itself an impeachable abuse of power.

Caveat: #NeverTrump conservatives like Charles Fried are doing the country a service by speaking out against Trumpism and against Barr and Trump. But that doesn't mean they should get a role in picking the Democratic nominees. All of them want Biden because Biden is the most conservative Democrat they could hope for and the most in alignment with their views. What about former Ron Paul supporters? Do they get a role?