NBC Analyst: By Dershowitz’ Logic, Trump Could ‘Disband the United States Army’ and Not Get Impeached
Alan Dershowitz made the extraordinary argument on Wednesday that the President can basically do whatever he wants if he thinks it’s in the public interest. The veteran lawyer made the claim while defending President Donald Trump against impeachment.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday, National Security Analyst Jeremy Bash was unimpressed.
“The only thing that Alan loves more than the law is the TV camera,” Morning Joe regular Mike Barnicle said.
“That’s pretty clear, but Jeremy Bash, listening to Alan describe what a president can do and not get impeached. I’d like to go back to your suggestion giving away nuclear codes to Russia if a president declared to himself that it was in the national interest, things like that, things like declaring to himself that it would be in the national interest if he ordered the U.S. Marshal Service to pick up every Muslim in the country and get them out of the country. I guess all of that, if he decrees it to be in the national interest, is OK?”
“Or if decides to disband the United States army,” Bash said. “Or if he decides to require all school children to show up on the White House lawn every morning and sing an anthem to him.”
“I mean, there are infinite number of examples of a president misusing the office of the presidency and violating his oath of office that endanger national security and undermine our constitution. And the Framers did include in the constitution this one critical check on presidential power. It’s not a vote of no confidence. It’s not a disagreement on policy. It’s a statement that when the president misuses his power for his own personal benefit, the fact pattern we have here, impeachment is the proper remedy.”
“And it’s extraordinarily rare, it’s extraordinarily sacred in the sense that you don’t want to take out that weapon on any policy distinction or difference, but this is a case where the President’s motive was solely to benefit himself so we don’t even have to get to the Dershowitz argument about mixed motive.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
