Did Trump Walk Into a Trap? - Larry Wilkerson

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Paul Jay

And Pence. I mean, if Pence isn't in they don't they can't do it.

Larry Wilkerson

And he's probably said, show me the numbers. You know, I'm not going to put my, you know, out there on the hacker unless you show me two thirds plus ten or whatever.

Paul Jay

Yeah, but at this point, he's not got much to lose. He's already burnt bridges with the crazy Trump people.

And now he needs to show that he's the next face of a more quote-unquote responsible criminal Republican Party.

Larry Wilkerson

And this is a moment this is a rare moment if courage prevails and it would take a certain courage he has not demonstrated that in the past by any means. But if it were even if it's politically motivated, I don't care if he's got a moment here where he can strike go. And if he's smart, he could perpetuate that goal. He could be the savior, if you will, of the situation, not only nationally, as the media has now portrayed it, but also in terms of what the Republican Party might have to offer in 2024.

What will he do it? That's the huge question. He seems a very cautious man.

Paul Jay

It's certainly in his interest to try to at the last second recoup his profile. But I wonder if they do move on, that is a president allowed to pardon himself at the time they're doing the 25th Amendment.

Larry Wilkerson

This is all just incredible defiance of what I thought was a legal principle and practice. You know, pardons are impossible without convictions. That is to say, if you haven't been convicted of a crime and I was under the understanding it had to be a federal crime in a federal court or a federal legal proceeding, you can't be pardoned by the president. Because there's no crime to pardon, in other words, premature pardons or pardons just in case, can't be done.

So, what are we doing here? We made a decision based on the flimsiest evidence in the world. And according to some injustice of flip of the coin, when we prosecuted Agnew, a sitting vice president, that a president could not be subjected to that. I understand the vote was three to three. And so they flipped a coin and there was more deliberation. The deliberation, of course, was this will be a political instrument in the future and it'll turn into just a political instrument.

And any time we don't like a president, we'll indict him, and then we'll tie him up and so forth. So they didn't do it. But if you were going to parse that one, how about this one? How about the idea of the president being above the law to the extent that he can pardon himself and his family for crimes for which they have not been convicted?

This is absurd. This is Giuliani law. So I don't know where we're going with this, I really don't. I'd like to see every pardon he gave in that sense. Expecting a crime, expecting a conviction overturned immediately, just thrown out immediately as being a violation of the basic law, but I don't know what will happen.

Paul Jay

Well, if tradition holds its course, kings don't prosecute kings, which like Obama, should have gone after Cheney and Bush, he was legally obligated to do so.

In fact, he, in a sense, participated, he instead, participates in a war crime by not going after Cheney and Bush. It was an obligation under international law.

Larry Wilkerson

Yeah, it'd be tough to go after a president. And I gave him the benefit of the doubt there. But I certainly would have gone after the SecDef and I would've gone after the vice president. After all, we got Agnew, who's to say we couldn't get Cheney and the evidence was just so manifest. I don't think it would have been a case politically.

Yes, but not legally. What do you do to him when you're finished? That's the real question. Do you actually jail them? Is it in Maryland and the general prison or?

Paul Jay

You know, I don't know if I've ever said this on camera or not, but I'm not for the abolition of capital punishment. I am for executions only, though, for high crimes and misdemeanors. When you get people at the level of the presidency, the vice president, maybe the majority leader, when you get to that level of responsibility, I can imagine.

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