Wow. Didn’t see that Ethics Hero coming at all.
ABC’s ubiquitous news host George Stephanopoulos has a dreadful EA dossier, though it hasn’t filled up lately since I decided around 2016 that none of the Sunday Morning news shows were professional or ethical enough to take time away from my sock drawer. However, this morning he did something bold and necessary. When his guest, Super-Trumper Senator J.D. Vance, made a bonkers and irresponsible case that the President could be justified in defying the Supreme Court, George just cut him off and ended the interview.
Bravo.
The discussion began with Stephanopoulos playing a clip of Vance advocating the tactic of President Jackson, when he told Chief Justice John Marshall that he was welcome to try to enforce a SCOTUS ruling that Jackson opposed. The Senator must have thought nobody would hear the right-wing podcast where he uttered that garbage. I also question whether Vance knew where that quote came from, and what occurred in its wake.
Jackson was grandstanding: the decision he was “defying” didn’t require Jackson to do (or not do) anything. However, Jackson’s supposed defiance was in the course of initiating the legitimately infamous “Trail of Tears” that forceably removed an estimated 60,000 native Americans from their lands, including where the Cherokee, amhad established a peaceful and thriving community in Georgia.
Here’s the exchange:
Stephanopolous: ““Fire everyone in the government then defy the Supreme Court? You think it’s OK for the president to fire the Supreme Court?” [Notice of Correction: I initially left out that first part of George’s question, confusing everyone. My fault.]
Vance: “We have a major problem here with administrators and bureaucrats in the government who don’t respond to the elected branches. Let’s just give one very real-world example of this: in 2019 Donald Trump, having defeated ISIS said, “We should redeploy our troops in Syria and Jordan out of the region.” You had multiple members of the Defense Department bureaucracy who fought him on that. So, what happened? We have sitting ducks in the Levant, three of whom just got killed because the bureaucrats aren’t listening to the political branches. That’s a fundamental component of our government, George, that whoever is in charge, agree or disagree with him, you have to follow the rules. If those people aren’t following the rules, then of course you have to fire them and of course the president has to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works, it has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”
Stephanopolous: “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”
Vance: “The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and look, I hope that they would not do this — but if the Supreme Court said that the president can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article 2 prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit. This is just basic constitutional legitimacy. You’re talking about a hypothetical where the Supreme Court tries to run the military. I don’t think that’s going to happen, George, but of course if it did the President would have to respond to it. There are multiple examples in history of the President of the United States doing just that.”
Whereupon George ended the interview as Vance protested, saying, “You made it very clear, the President can defy the Supreme Court. Thanks for your time this morning.” Vance’s mic was then cut off.
Good. I do wish Stephanopoulis had pointed out that there have been many examples of the President exerting his power over the military by firing a top general, but none since “King Andy” of defying a Supreme Court ruling, which Jackson technically didn’t do anyway. Still, Vance was making a misleading and outrageous argument. The ABC host had no obligation to let him continue, and it was gutsy of Stephanopoulis to cut the Senator off.
Added: Some commenters have noted that George initially suggested that Vance had advocated “firing” the Court rather than defying it. I gave George the benefit of the doubt there: I’m pretty certain he just misspoke. I do wish Stephanopoulis had pointed out that Congress would have to repeal or substantially amend the Civil Service Act (the 1883 Pendleton Act) for it to be legal for any President to fire career government employees.
Ethics Alarms 
Stephanopolous: “You think it’s OK for the president to fire the Supreme Court?”
What? Did he really say that? Where the heck does that question come from?
And, if he did, Vance doesn’t seem to be responding to that question at all. He is arguing that the DoD officials who argued with Trump in 2019 over withdrawing troops from the Middle East were responsible for the three soldiers killed in Jordan a few days ago? 4 1/2 years later?
Whatever it was in response to, that’s a pretty incoherent argument. Especially since I think most conservatives blame Biden for the deaths for not having responded to the previous 150 or so attacks on our soldiers. Or is that the DoD’s fault for defying Trump?
I am really confused. Did I miss someone saying that the Supreme Court was going to prohibit Biden from firing one of his generals? If anyone would have made that argument, I’d think it would have been MacArthur. He thought he ought to be president anyways, or some higher job perhaps.
I assume that the bits of the podcast that were played spoke positively about Andy’s (apocryphal?) statement that “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Or perhaps George C. Wallace’s pledge to defy the federal courts? Or perhaps the quite incorrect media reporting that Gov Abbott is defying the Supreme Court? (He isn’t. The Supreme Court vacated a lower court injunction, without any clarifying explanation.) Anyway, unless the podcast that was played referred to defying or disbanding the Supremes, George’s question made no sense at all. I guess we need some clarification of this post by its author. Jack?
That’s the quote, and George led into it with a clip from the podcast in which Vance said that Trump should fire civil servants and others, and if the Supreme Court tried to stop him (as this would violate the Civil Service act), Trump could defy the Supreme Court and do it anyway…like Jackson. Ugh. George was only interested in the Court defiance part (and yes, Vance had used that dubious quote while advocating the tactic of President Jackson, when Andy allegedly told Chief Justice John Marshall that he was welcome to try to enforce a SCOTUS ruling that Jackson opposed. The podcast clip is at the link. I couldn’t find a video that embeds on Word Press, and there was no transcript yet that included the podcast. (Welcome to my world) And, as you know, I can’t type well enough to try to transcribe the thing on my own.
Since the argument was over the second part of George’s question, I only quoted that, and it contributed to the confusion. My fault. George asked, “Fire everyone in the government then defy the Supreme Court? You think it’s OK for the president to fire the Supreme Court?” I have added that first part to the post, if that helps. Still, George confused everything by suggesting that Vance had OKed “firing the Supreme Court,” which he didn’t—just refusing to obey “an illegal ruling,” whatever that is supposed to mean. Vance then ignored the second part of George’s question—which was really what George had focused on, the SCOTUS defiance, to talk about, I suspect because he knew he had gotten out over his skis regarding Jackson and the Court. George, however, only wanted to talk about defying SCOTUS, not firing government employees—and Vance confused the topic further by shifting to firing generals, which is within the President’s power.
See why I don’t watch Sunday Morning TV?
I’d think he was more of a hero if more of the left had said the same a year and a half ago when Keith Overbite and many more like him were encouraging states to defy the Bruen ruling and the two other very pro-conservative rulings that came down around the same time. He said:
It has become necessary to dissolve the Supreme Court of the United States.
The first step is for a state the “court” has now forced guns upon, to ignore this ruling.
Great. You’re a court? Why and how do think you can enforce your rulings?
The fact of the matter is that both sides are perfectly ok with defying the SCOTUS, and any other court, when it doesn’t rule their way. The fact of the matter is also that the courts can rule and the legislatures pass laws all they want. Unless the executive will carry out those rulings and laws, they’re just words on a page. There is no way to force the police to arrest whoever or to force prosecutors to bring charges. We saw all of that very clearly four years ago, when local police would do nothing to stop riots and prosecutors would let BLM rioters off with a slap on the wrist. We saw it even more clearly when the January 6 people received sentences that were much harsher. If we’d looked a little earlier at the Pacific Northwest, which seems to be the petri dish of the worst defiance of law and order in the nations we’d have seen it. Two years before George Floyd protesters shut down access to the ICE facility in Portland. The local authorities wouldn’t do a damn thing, and finally the Feds pulled men from other duties to put together a task force that broke the siege. The next year a Dutch immigrant named Willem van Spronsen tried to assault a similar place in Tacoma with crude firebombs, and the feds shot him dead without a second thought.
This is why it’s important to get control of the executive branch this year. At that point the right will be empowered to do whatever needs to be done, especially by Trump, who won’t have to face the voters again. COVID and George Floyd just happened to land in an election year by luck. An empowered GOP government would be in a very good position to start imposing law and order by any means necessary.
You will recall that Mike Huckabee advocated defying SCOTUS with the same-sex marriage ruling, because, he said, it violates “God’s Law.” The whole idea—you are right that both parties give it credence—is dangerous and toxic.
By the way, Olbermann hasn’t had major platform in 13 years. He’s just been bouncing around sports gigs and the web wilderness. How time flies!
Didn’t Biden defy the Supreme Court on the eviction ban?
President Biden instructed the Centers for Disease Control Tuesday to issue yet another so-called “eviction moratorium” through October 3, 2021, following the original order’s July 31 expiration. The president issued the edict despite the Supreme Court indicating weeks ago that such action would require congressional mandate.
https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-expert-eviction-moratorium-presidential-fiat-blatantly-violates-constitution-defies
Student loan “forgiveness”, anyone?
Do you think the Supreme Court is getting tired of playing whack-a-mole with this administration?
They signaled to him that eviction bans would be overturned, but that was a sidebar when they decided a similar ban would be moot since it was about to expire anyway.
A smart president might have said to himself, well if we do this we know they are going to overturn it, so let’s not go there.
But no, he made an apparently cynical decision to try and get some money out the door before the Supreme Court overturned it.
He’ll be a hero if he ever calls out his own tribe. Otherwise all this is is more proof of tribalism.
The right-ish blogs and commentators are claiming that Vance “owned” George. (I call him George because even as a Greek, I have trouble spelling his last name). Vance’s babble about defying the Supreme Court was total, inexcusable garbage, and deserved what it got.
Vance maybe deserved it. But George only gave it because he’s a leftist shill not from any fidelity to Republican government.
Another example of doing the right thing for some wrong reasons, among the right one. Still, it is very rare to see an interviewer cut off an elected official who is spouting total nonsense. Better to cut him off than for George to sound like a partisan by arguing with him.