[Salon] NY Post: Biden - "Vote for me or the Constitution dies"

[Jim Bovard <jbovard@his.com>]

https://nypost.com/2024/07/02/opinion/bidens-supreme-court-outburst-exposed-his-presidencys-lies/

New York Post, July 3, 2024

Biden's Supreme Court outburst revealed the falsehoods at the heart of his presidency

by James Bovard

“Vote for me or the Constitution dies” is President Biden’s latest pitch to revive his faltering re-election campaign. 

In four minutes of remarks Monday evening, he condemned a Supreme Court decision while signaling his plans to pirouette as the reincarnation of George Washington.

The high court ruled that day that a president “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers” and is “entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”

Thanks to the decision, former President Donald Trump likely won’t go to trial prior to the November election on federal charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol clash. 

And Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan said Tuesday that the ruling will also postpone Trump’s sentencing in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” case by more than two months.

Biden denounced the delay in holding Trump liable as “a terrible disservice to the people of this nation” and urged American voters to signal that “Jan. 6 makes [Trump] unfit for public office.”

Seemingly speaking down from Mount Olympus, Biden declared that presidents “face moments where you need the wisdom to respect the limits of the power of the office of the presidency.”

How noble of Uncle Joe! 

But then he claimed, “I know I will respect the limits of the presidential power, as I have for 3½ years.”

Bummer! That line obliterated all the president’s lofty pretenses.  

While Biden piously invoked the “rule of law” Monday, he consistently behaves as if his good intentions entitle him to dictatorial power.

The Supreme Court ruled that Biden’s $500 billion scheme to buy votes by forgiving federal student debt was illegal; Biden then openly bragged that the decision striking down his program “didn’t stop me” from canceling student-loan debt with one new scheme after another. 

Biden decreed that 84 million American adults working for private companies must get COVID vaccines (though the White House knew the shots failed to prevent infections or transmission), with the president deriding vaccine skeptics as murderers who only wanted “the freedom to kill you with my COVID.”

The court torpedoed that, too, since the administration had justified the mandate as part of its jurisdiction over workplace safety.

The Supreme Court further struck down Biden’s illegal extension of a COVID-era eviction moratorium, scoffing at the administration’s attempt to justify the edict via an old law dealing with “fumigation and pest extermination.”

Last September, a federal appeals court slammed the Biden White House and FBI for conducting an unconstitutional censorship “pressure campaign designed to coerce social-media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government” — especially, it just so happened, conservatives and Republicans.

In dismissing that case on technical grounds last week, the Supreme Court got it wrong, notably by ignoring the FBI role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story that The Post exposed before the 2020 election.

Biden spoke on Monday as if he worshipped legal procedures — but his devotion is selective. 

His Justice Department is scorning a congressional subpoena for the audio tapes of the president’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur (which the White House seemingly fears will further confirm the president’s mental deterioration).

Thanks to voracious Biden prosecutors, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon began a four-month prison sentence Monday for the same scorning of a congressional subpoena.

Biden has stretched executive power far beyond reason — from his vast expansion of pardon and parole powers for millions of illegal immigrants, to his attempt to use the school-lunch program to force public schools to permit mixed-gender showers and bathrooms, to his perversion of Title IX to effectively destroy girls’ sports.

To complement the president’s power grabs, the Biden administration has continually expanded the target list for federal investigations and surveillance — including traditional Catholics, angry parents at school board meetings and even frustrated young guys supposedly prone to “involuntary celibate violent extremism.”

Biden concluded his Monday spiel by invoking “the character of George Washington,” who “define[d] the presidency” with his belief that “power was limited, not absolute.” He claimed that “character” is now the only restraint on White House power — suggesting that Americans are luckier than ever to have him in the Oval Office.


One can oppose the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling without swallowing Biden’s hogwash about being a constitutional vestal virgin.

James Bovard’s latest book is “Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty.”