Is the Constitution Unconstitutional?

Yesterday, Donald Trump’s White House Counsel told the House of Representatives that the White House would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry in any way. The letter began:

I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous, legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all past bipartisan precedent-as an “impeachment inquiry.” As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.

For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret.

In essence, the letter claims the impeachment inquiry has no Constitutional basis since the House has not voted to initiate the inquiry and since the Republicans don’t have subpoena power.

The problem with this line of thought is that the Constitution does not require  a House vote or any particular procedures. Here is what the Constitution says:

The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment. (Article 1, Section 2)

The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.

Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law. (Article 1, Section 3)

The House acts as a grand jury which does work in secret. The House investigates possible charges and if necessary constructs Articles of Impeachment which are then tried in the Senate. Because the Constitution doesn’t specify procedures, the House can do things publicly and privately or in some combination.

It appears to me that Trump is painting himself into a corner and is trying to buy some time. However, many of those following him might believe that his rights are being infringed just because he said so.

At least two of his current supporters once offered a different point of view of the executive branch’s failure to cooperate with Congress.  Lindsey Graham had this to say about Nixon:

This is the situation we are now in with Trump. He has repeatedly failed to comply with requests for information and subpoenas or allow his staff to comply.

Trey Gowdy, who is now going to assist Trump in his defense, once agreed it was wrong to withhold information.

Trump’s letter, in essence, argues that the Constitution is unconstitutional. Trump wants to drive the process but has no authority to do so.

Lindsey Graham on Trump: Is He a Racist or a Narcissist?

This is a question Trump supporter and Senator from SC Lindsey Graham sought to address in his defense of Trump today. Here is a series of tweets from Frank Thorp, NBC news reporter with Graham’s thoughts.

I really do believe that if you’re a Somali refugee who likes Trump, he’s not going to say ‘go back to Somalia.’ A racist says go back to Somalia because you’re a Somalian or you’re a Muslim or whatever, that’s just the way he is. More narcissism than anything else.

The main line of defense is that Trump likes who likes him even if that person is a person of color. According to Graham, race alone does not determine the disliking. Trump says nasty things about people who insult him even if they are white. Witness his treatment of Paul Ryan. It is true that he cuts down anybody who points out the president’s flaws. Furthermore, he has surrounded himself with minorities who gush his praise. It is less than clear what he says about them behind closed doors but he has not avoided his minority supporters.

As I thought about this, it occurred to me that a check on this would be to assess the types of insults he makes against various disliked people. I haven’t checked this, but I don’t think he has ever told Bernie Sanders or Nancy Pelosi to go back to their countries of origin.

The Nature of Prejudice

The work of Gordon Allport on prejudice seems relevant. Allport wrote in 1954 that humans find it very easy to fall into prejudices but very difficult to abandon them. A foundation for prejudice according to Allport is personal values. For Trump there appears to be no higher value than loyalty to himself. Allport wrote:

…negative prejudice is a reflex of one’s own system of values. We prize our own mode of existence and correspondingly underprize (or actively attack) what seems to us to
threaten it The thought has been expressed by Sigmund Freud, “In the undisguised antipathies and aversion which people feel towards strangers with whom they have to do, we recognize the expression of self-love, of narcissism.”

The process is especially clear in time of war. When an enemy threatens all or nearly all of our positive values we stiffen our resistance and exaggerate the merits of our cause. We feel — and this is an instance of overgeneralization — that we are wholly right. (If we did not believe this we could not marshall all our energies for our defense.) And if we are wholly right then the enemy must be wholly wrong. Since he is wholly wrong, we should not hesitate to exterminate him. (p. 26)

Allport also argued prejudices are maintained by placing exceptions to the negative prejudgment into subcategories. Allport described the process this way:

There is a common mental device that permits people to hold to prejudgments even in the face of much contradictory evidence. It is the device of admitting exceptions. “There are nice Negroes but . . ” or “Some of my best friends are Jews but. . . .” This is a disarming device. By excluding a few favored cases, the negative rubric is kept intact for all other cases. In short, contrary evidence is not admitted and allowed to modify the generalization; rather it is perfunctorily acknowledged but excluded. (p. 23)

So in response to Lindsey Graham, it certainly is possible that President Trump is motivated by both negative racial stereotypes and narcissism. I am not making a diagnosis but I am saying that the work of Allport demonstrates that one may maintain negative prejudice while claiming one does not have negative judgments by using an exception as proof — as Graham did for Trump. What may move minorities (or a member of any other group Mr. Trump doesn’t like) into the good or — more cynically — useful category is that they praise him. He appears to dislike many whites but doesn’t appear to have a group prejudice toward them. What is at issue is the evidence that keeps coming up that he may have prejudices toward certain minorities as a group which can be overcome principally by obsequious praise for him.