Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
President Joe Biden speaks in Cloth Hall at the White House on July 1, 2024 in Washington, DC.
CNN
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“I disagree with it!”
President Joe Biden issued a dramatic and direct response to a landmark Supreme Court decision that could give Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump unlimited power if he wins a second term.
But Biden’s defiant attitude also conveyed a poignant image of a president who refuses to be banished from the biggest political stage, even after his dismal debate performance revealed the decline of old age.
Biden appeared on Monday night in the solemn setting of Cloth Hall, just inside the White House’s main entrance, with the presidential seal behind him and marble columns on either side. But his insistence that the president is not a king was the opposite of regal. Biden said the Supreme Court’s decision against Trump’s blanket claim of immunity from prosecution for his attempts to rig the 2020 election — which holds that the president is immune from liability for his official duties — was dangerous and unprecedented.
“Now the American people must do what the court was willing to do but did not: pass judgment on Donald Trump’s actions,” Biden said.
His speech was both a seminal moment in the history of the presidency and a calculated political maneuver: his first step after a frightening and humiliating weekend that saw a flurry of calls for him to abandon his presidential campaign.
In four minutes, Biden, 81, summed up two increasingly crucial and urgent choices facing voters in November.
— Will the country once again turn to a 78-year-old former president with authoritarian instincts who believes the Constitution gives him absolute power?
— And with the relentless march of time behind him and facing a personal, existential political crisis, does Biden have what it takes to pose a final obstacle to Trump’s authoritarian ambitions?
The president appeared to speak Monday evening after returning from a stay at Camp David since Saturday, surrounded by family and dogged by speculation about his political future. Biden is preparing for polls that will show whether his painful-to-watch struggle in the debate has further jeopardized his already tough reelection path.
The political theatre did little to ease concerns about Biden’s health, mental capacity and age, sparked by his wrenching, at-times slurred and incoherent appearance at CNN’s debate in Atlanta on Thursday. Biden, who appeared pale and old during the debate, looked tanned and fatigued during Monday’s speech, perhaps due to his surroundings or the difference in TV makeup. But even though he was reading from a teleprompter, the president’s words sounded hurried and typical of an older man.
And after he finished his speech, the president ignored questions from reporters. His delicate, almost staggering gait as he returned to the Blue Room highlighted a loss of motor skills that only reminded voters of his advanced age. To erase the indelible image of a president appearing open-mouthed and confused during last week’s debate, Biden will need to increase the number and pace of his public events, raising his level of energy and engagement from week to week.
But the powerful quality of Biden’s speech and the substance of his words left no room for doubt about his conviction, even in a much more manageable situation than a debate with the brutish Trump. Monday’s speech was a classic example of how the president deploys his image and rhetoric.
The court granted absolute immunity for the president’s “core” activities, which Trump sought in filings in his 2020 federal election interference lawsuit. The conservative majority said Trump’s conversations with the Justice Department and his efforts to enlist officials in efforts to overturn the election results were covered by absolute immunity. Critics have said that element could give Trump an opportunity to use the Justice Department to seek retribution against his personal enemies if he is re-elected.
The Supreme Court said that other official acts and more routine powers of the president are entitled to at least some immunity, leaving it to lower courts to determine their scope.
But Biden asserted the presidency within the constraints of a constitutional system designed to restrain, not unleash, executive power. The irony of a president warning that the powers of his office must be limited was consistent with the position of all but a few U.S. presidents who understood that the integrity of the public trust and American democracy depended on their own restraint.
Biden argued that executive power is “limited, not absolute,” citing George Washington, the first president to establish the tradition of voluntary and peaceful transfer of power that Trump abused four years ago. Presidential speeches don’t have to be long to be impactful — the Gettysburg Address, after all, is just 270 words or so, depending on which transcript you use. And Biden’s brief first public appearance before the cameras since the debate was uniquely powerful and powerful.
“The American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s attack on our democracy on January 6th renders him unfit to hold the highest office in the land,” Biden said. “The American people must decide whether it is acceptable for him to resort to violence to stay in power. Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide whether to entrust the presidency to him again now that they know he will have the courage to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.”
Biden’s cautious response to the Supreme Court’s decision contrasted with his predecessor’s declaration of victory after making clear the voters’ choice in November.
“The Supreme Court’s decision was far more impactful than some expected. It is very well written, smart, and clears away the stench of the Biden trial and hoax that has been used to unfairly attack me, a political opponent of the unscrupulous Joe Biden,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Many of these fake cases will now fade away or be forgotten. God Bless America!”
Trump’s capitalization, egocentrism, and false claims that he was the victim of politicized righteousness only strengthened his claims about the danger Biden posed to democracy, but his skills as a demagogue convinced many of his supporters that Biden, not the former president who refused to accept the election results, was the real threat to democracy.
Trump has never hidden what he would do with his increased executive power. After all, he has called for the abolition of the Constitution in social media posts. During the height of the 2020 pandemic, he falsely stated that “as President of the United States, my powers are and should be complete.” In a social media campaign likely intended to sway the Supreme Court’s conservative majority before the ruling, he repeatedly said the presidency could not function without immunity for all actions. And there is no doubt that he would use his second term for personal retribution.
Following Monday’s ruling, those remarks take on new meaning.
“This wasn’t the grand slam that Trump was hoping for, but it was damn close,” Andrew McCabe, CNN’s senior law enforcement analyst and former deputy FBI director, told CNN’s Caitlin Collins on “The Source” on Monday.
“The definition of immunity is so broad, and when combined with the provision that no official acts may be used as evidence in a prosecution of non-official acts, the scope of prosecutions against presidents and former presidents is extremely limited.”
That reality would likely give Trump even greater latitude to interpret presidential powers expansively if he wins the November election, something Biden is pleading with voters to consider. He has sought to point Americans to the views of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a scathing dissent against the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision.
“I join Justice Sotomayor in her dissent today. She said… ‘In every exercise of civil power, the President is now a king above the law. Out of fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ End quote. And so should the American people.
“I’m opposed,” Biden said.
