Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

The macho men of Manhattan don’t seek forgiveness for their sins.  In this peculiar subculture, it’s taken as a sign of weakness.  Donald Trump is a macho, macho man, and this bothers people like my friend former MT Rep. Matthew Monforton.  He thinks any such man, and the country he leads, will be punished for such arrogance.  And, indeed, the ancient Greeks believed excessive pride or defiance of the gods led to nemesis.

I tend to judge a man by his enemies, and by that standard Trump is a super star. The catalogue of his sin is an open book.  He doesn’t pretend to be anyone’s moral exemplar.  He wants the American people to love him, warts and all.  A lot of them do.  I won’t criticize them for it.

He’s a political genius who is also an American patriot.  I’ll settle for that, with all his warts.

Deion Kathawa is only a law school student, and not a big foot conservative like Jonah.  But he knows how to put people in their place.  Goldberg is in the process of becoming a pest.  Let’s hope he recovers his senses, and learns a little humility.

The Mueller-Rosenstein conspiracy is beginning to unravel, and it’s happening fast.  These puffed up, presumptuous Grand Inquisitors will soon be on the receiving end.  This will be fun to watch.  The Great Comeuppance is my term  for what’s about to unfold.

If Trump handles this correctly, which I believe he will, his approval rating will quickly be above 50%.  And the names Mueller and Rosenstein, and the institutions they represent, will be mud.

Those are the words that send chills down the spines of lawyers.  This was President Andrew Jackson’s response to Chief Justice Marshal’s opinion in Worcester V. Georgia (1832).  In that case the Supreme Court attempted to dictate to the President.  Lawyers love it when judges tell elected officials what to do.  It empowers them.

Jackson was telling the Court to go to hell.  The Constitution does not subordinate the President to the Supreme Court.  Show me where that is in the text.

I think the time is coming when President Trump should deliver a message to all the lawyers who think they have some authority over him.  Go to hell.  Or, you’re fired.

Who decides?  It was the principle at stake in 1868, and it’s essentially the same today.  Is there one man, the President, who decides executive branch policy, or do others have a say as well?

The language of the Constitution is unequivocal.  The President alone decides how to enforce the law.  No one else.

When President Andrew Johnson fired Secretary of War Stanton, Congress challenged his authority to do so in the only way it could  —  he was impeached in 1868.  If the Senate had convicted him, and removed him from office, the result would have been a form of parliamentary government, in which the legislature controlled the President, and the executive branch.  Because he was acquitted, the Presidency, and the system designed by the Framers, was saved.

Today lawyers in the Department of Justice and the FBI think they have some authority independent of the President.  It is a usurpation of power and a challenge to the Presidency.  Not to Trump.  To the office of President.

This challenge by a cabal of government lawyers to the power of the Presidency will end in their ignominious defeat.  They can only win if Trump is impeached, convicted, and removed from office.  That’s not going to happen, so the outcome of this contest is preordained.  It’s just a question of how and when Trump chooses to end it.

Mueller has been given enough rope to hang himself, which he is in the process of doing.  President Trump can put him out of his misery any time he chooses.

“You’re fired,” is Trump’s trademark phrase.  To end this challenge to the Presidency, all he has to do is say it.