Thursday on MS NOW’s “The Last Word,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said President Donald Trump needs to “stay in his lane.”
Host Lawrence O’Donnell said, “How much control of elections does the Constitution grant to the president of the United States?”
Raskin said, “Zero, as Judge Talwani said, the Constitution vests that power in the states. And then there’s complementary or supplementary power in Congress to alter the time, place and manner of elections under certain conditions. But neither the states nor the Congress gave any power to the president to it. So, the Federal Court has properly ruled this was nothing but an outrageous power grab by the president, and he’s got to stay in his lane. His job is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not rewritten and thwarted.”
O’Donnell said, “The states who got together and formed the United States of America by ratifying the Constitution would never have voted to ratify the Constitution. If it’s said the president can control elections. They were already having elections in their states for their state governments.”
Raskin said, “Right. And when we, the people, created the Constitution, we were very clear that the president had no role in controlling congressional elections or, of course, presidential elections, which is why President Trump essentially had to apply all of that coercive leverage and pressure on Mike Pence to try to get him to engage in the political coup in 2020. And, of course, Pence stood up for the Constitution against the president. But that’s another episode demonstrating that Donald Trump tries to interfere in a way that he has no constitutional place being involved in at all.”
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