ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings Plus chose to do their part Tuesday in furthering the coordinated and wholly manufactured narrative that America’s already in or on the verge of a “frightening” “constitutional crisis” because the Trump administration has expressed opposition to the judge shopping and perpetual thwarting of nearly his entire agenda by activist, mostly far-left judges.
The great Josh Hammer astutely diagnosed this issue in his debut column for UnHerd, wondering whether we should accept the reality that “a lower court with narrow local jurisdiction” (and not the Supreme Court) has “render[ed] so-called nationwide injunctions that purport to bind every American citizen.”
This, he wrote, was something “there is good reason to believe that America’s Founding Fathers would have been baffled by such gross assertions of judicial hegemony.”
On ABC, chief legal analyst Dan Abrams first said there was a “difference between not complying at this particular moment and defying” with the latter being more troublesome. Citing a tweet from Vice President JD Vance about judges trying “to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Abrams huffed this was “a lot scarier” and asserted he meant “courts don’t have a role” in anything the White House does.
“That’s frightening. And that’s why it’s so important, what Rachel just pointed out, about Republican senators coming forward and saying that’s not the case,” Abrams added with the insinuation that congressional Republicans should rise up against Trump.
Earth to ABC: Where was this during the Biden years on, say, student loans?
Asked about consequences for this, Abrams called it “tricky” since “[i]t’s supposed to be handled in the political arena” with Trump and Vance with the court able to levy fines to individuals.
Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos concluded with the ultimate fearmongering: “Except when it goes to the Supreme Court. If, eventually they’re gonna decide on one of these cases, and then we’re going to have the real confrontation.”
Abrams played along, saying “Vance seems to be suggesting maybe [they] don’t” have to listen to the Supreme Court.
Cue the Resistance fear porn!
CBS Mornings Plus came right out of the gate with the left’s preferred framing, courtesy of a chyron reading “The First 100 Days; Constitution Crisis?” It morphed shortly thereafter to “The First 100 Days; Testing the Limits of Presidential Power.”
Co-host Adriana Diaz didn’t waste any time joining in on the narrative created in part of whole cloth by a New York Times article, including the “constitutional crisis” buzzword (click “expand”):
The Trump administration’s flurry of executive orders in his first few weeks of office have brought about sweeping changes and we’re not talking about the federal government. Some legal experts say our country could be headed towards a constitutional crisis as the President pushes the boundaries of his power. Look at this, a federal judge in Rhode Island said the Trump administration ignored his order to unfreeze billions of dollars of federal aid and is directing Trump to restore the funds. Meanwhile, the President’s allies are challenging the role of the judicial branch with Vice President J.D. Vance recently saying, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” And just this morning, Elon Musk weighed in posting, “democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup.”
Diaz took this to CBS News legal analyst Jessica Levinson: “[A]ren’t federal judges well within their right to review any actions that they deem to be – or that others deem to be unconstitutional?”
Levinson educated viewers with a 10,000-foot view about the three branches of government with the judiciary “hav[ing] a role to play here…when it comes to” the legality of “decisions that are made by our political branches, by the president and by Congress.”
It sounds great, but that’s not what’s happening here (as Hammer noted). Levinson showed her ideological tilt by next suggesting there’s an “assumption behind judicial review…that judges aren’t going to substitute” or impose “their own judgment” or “policy” on the other branches (click “expand”):
TONY DOKOUPIL: So, Jessica, J.D. Vance, the Vice President, who has a law degree from Yale, not for nothing, he says “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” It sounds like a lot rests on this question of what legitimate power is. Do I have that right?
LEVINSON: Tony, you took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say that word legitimate is doing an enormous amount of work there, as I would say to my students when we’re reading a case. Yes, I think a lot is hinging on legitimate. And, of course, the assumption is that you can only check illegitimate actions and, frankly, that’s our entire setup, right? The assumption behind judicial review is that judges aren’t going to substitute their own judgment, aren’t going to say, you know, here’s the policy I would prefer. They will say, here is what is in – within the bounds of what you can do under the Constitution. So, yes, I agree, a lot riding on that word “legitimate.”
Before her signal froze, she started to say there hasn’t ever been a time in history in which presidents have disregarded the judiciary, again playing into the left’s doomsday scenario.
In contrast to all that, NBC’s Today pumped the brakes. Asked by co-host Savannah Guthrie “what happens if they do” ignore judicial rulings beyond simply “fight[ing] them in court,” senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett (and daughter of Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett) suggested everyone relax:
[I]t’s an open question, how a judge might enforce a contempt order in that case. The judge in Rhode Island basically giving them a warning…[W]hile the President and Vice President are saying the authorities don’t have the authority, DOJ lawyers are not in court saying anything like that. They’re saying, ‘oh, our bad, we didn’t realize the scope of the order,’ so there’s a little bit of a space there between what’s happening in practice and what’s happening in action.
To see the relevant transcripts from February 11, click here (on ABC) and here (for CBS).
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