Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Deputy White House Press Secretary who is also the daughter of the twice-presidential conservative candidate Mike Huckabee, has been splendid in fielding hostile questions from the press about President Trump’s repeated use of Twitter. She observed that Trump “has over 100-plus million contacts through social media, on all those platforms” including Twitter.
“I think it’s a very important tool for him to be able to utilize,” she added. When asked if Trump’s tweets are vetted by an attorney, she candidly and unapologetically replied, “Not that I’m aware of.”
The President of the United States should not need to have his comments vetted by an attorney before speaking directly with the American people. Alexander Hamilton promised that the judiciary would be the “weakest” of our three branches of government, and the President has as much authority as all nine Supreme Court Justices combined.
That is what our Constitution provides, and that is what our Founders intended. The idea that President Trump shouldn’t speak directly to the American people without having his remarks vetted by an attorney shows how far the political power structure has strayed from its constitutional moorings.
Less than a year ago, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a series of off-the-cuff remarks critical of Trump, calling him a “faker” and even musing that she might “move to New Zealand” if he were elected. No one suggested then that Ginsburg’s comments should have been vetted by the Chief Justice before she spoke.
The same people who gave Ginsburg a pass for her intemperate remarks about Trump when he was a candidate are now saying that as President of the United States, Trump should be more careful how he says things, lest the supposedly supreme power of the judiciary punish him for it.
Contrary to the media, Trump should be free to share his views on litigation strategy with the American people whom he represents as our duly elected president. There's no confidentiality protecting such communications, but courts are not supposed to be in the business of ruling against a newly elected president as he works overtime to protect national security and fulfill the campaign pledge upon which he was elected.
