Changing America / Mark Green Podcast

It was a very regrettable lack of imagination by modern presidents that they never anticipated foreign terrorists using commercial aircraft as weapons. Before Jules Verne and the Wright Brothers, the Founders can be forgiven for their lack of prescience.

But we’ve also now arrived at a new moment in the Inflection Zone that those who spearheaded the Revolution and Constitution also never anticipated – a treasonous President surrounded by careerist yes-men and a cowed congress insisting that we overthrow our constitutional democracy on its 250th anniversary.

The familiar frog-in-boiling-water metaphor has now ceased to be merely allegorical. Traditionalists comforting themselves by saying “Well, he’d never do THAT” need to admit how often they were wrong before to assume any self-restraint by a person who appears more akin to King George than George Washington …although to be fair to the King, even he eventually surrendered.

Notwithstanding persistent losses in special elections and a tongue-lashing by the supposedly Supreme Court, here’s what a purely performative president is now doing: threatening to a) attack a country of 80 million that didn’t attack us, b) enact a work-around with different but also unconstitutional tariffs and c) prosecute TV hosts who mock him.

For those who understand that a democracy cannot survive three more years of a murder-suide pact between the executive and legislative branches, it’s time to pursue unprecedented strategies for an unprecedented president accustomed to getting the other guy to flinch.

*25th Amendment. It still seems impossible to anticipate his North Korean Cabinet of Hegseth/Noem/Bondi/Patel etc. invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. They are too unprincipled and fearful of actual MAGA violence to take that step. PM Thatcher’s own cabinet did just that but British officials in a country descended from the 1215 Magna Carter appear far more ethical when it comes to law and tradition.

*SOTU. As we recently noted and of far lesser consequence, messrs Schumer and Jeffries should organize their two caucuses to boycott the Tuesday State of the Union since business-as-usual is the wrong message when Radical Republicans are threatening to topple the temple. Apparently, Democratic leaders worry this move could endanger Members in swing states/districts, but the alternative is to risk appearing to be Trumpist props and accomplices.

*SCOTUS. Unlike its Presidential Immunity decision, it’s possible that a chastened Court will finally use its Shadow Docket to quickly enjoin any Trump effort on new tariffs, even an offensive war to block ‘47’s fresh extremism. Now conceivable though not probable.

*THUNE? In the pre-Fox era, congressional leaders in 1974 pressured a right-wing but not shameless GOP president to resign. A final strategy would also be novel but better than risking a civil war between not regions but zip codes: President Bush + President Obama + Majority Leader Thune could hold a joint press conference explaining why federal/state/local officials, the mainstream media and ex-Brass should agree that it’s past-time for Trump to resign.

Thune of course is no moderate but neither does he appear as unhinged as the Miller-Supreme Team has proven to be.

Democrats, a dozen Republicans, many in the media and 7+million No-Kings Marchers have shown their fidelity to the Declaration and Constitution rather than to a corrupt president. Since it’s surely conceivable that Obama and Bush might concur with this approach, a Senate Republican Leader subpoenaed by history might also relent in the realization that the status quo under a President Caligula is intolerable.

Might that trigger a more massive wave of majority pressure? It would obviously be paradoxical for a conservative leader...but something’s gotta give.

Can anyone listening pass this along to John Thune who is unlikely a paid subscriber but is surely miserable with the status quo.

I welcome other ideas to break today’s logjam of treasonous Republicans, cautious Democrats and the legacy media. But someone(s) need to do the right-thing and not merely the white-thing to save their country for another 250 years.

“Dear Mr. President,

We, Democratic leaders, must decline the invitation to again sit through your broadside of lying and self-glorification at your February 24th State of the Union address.

As President with a First Amendment, you can keep trying to poison the well of our democracy. But we have the agency to instead spend the time that Tuesday evening in our offices responding to citizen questions and complaints. As a talk show expert, you may desire to imitate Rod Sterling, luring everyone into a distortion field called “The Inflection Zone.” But we choose rather to be inspired by Benjamin Franklin, who in 1732 said, “When truth and error and truth both have fair play, the former is always an outmatch for the latter.”

Both parties, this past century, have engaged in the informative and entertaining SOTU custom of listening to good-faith presidents. But unlike say TR and Wilson, Ike and JFK, Reagan and Clinton – you are a bad-faith actor who shows only contempt for law, custom and truth. Your office deserves much respect. You, however, do not.

Why? Here are a few examples:

*The Electoral College concluded that you lost the state of Minnesota three times…yet you don’t.

*Sixty federal courts, William Barr, and the conservative CATO Institute agree there is next to zero voter fraud…yet you don’t.

*Every vote count and recount concur that Joe Biden won the White House by over 7 million votes in 2020…yet you don’t and indeed go on to boast that you won in 2024 by “an overwhelming majority” (which a plurality of 1.4 percent surely was not).

*Article I clearly states that only Congress can constitutionally impose tariffs, which all economists understand are taxes imposed on American consumers, not on foreign governments…yet you don’t.

*The Supreme Court agrees that it’s illegal to deport people with no criminal record and without Due Process…yet you don’t.

*There’s near-unanimity that Renee Good and Alex Peretti were not “domestic terrorists” when they were shot to death in Minneapolis by ICE agents…yet you don’t.

*immigration experts know that families dangerously travel hundreds of miles seeking asylum from oppression, not the possibility of voting…yet you don’t.

*Since 36 other nations use voting-by-mail, the world knows that the U.S. is not the “only one”...yet you don’t.

*12 jurors unanimously found you guilty of criminal fraud 34 times…which you dismiss as weaponized justice.

*No prior president has sent armed federal agents only into blue cities due to alleged violence…until you did.

*Although there were hundreds of child rapes in the biggest pedophile ring in American history – run by a close personal friend of yours – only one person is now incarcerated due to the Epstein scandal…yet you and your DOJ further disclosures or prosecutions.

This rap sheet of deception -- and hundreds of other examples -- compels average Americans to simply ask – what the hell is wrong with you?

You don’t get to create reality, only to live in it with the rest of us – it’s called a self-governing Democracy. You may want Democratic Members to sit as silent accomplices while TeamTrump plots to sabotage fair elections, non-partisan law enforcement and the Constitution. But why would we show respect to someone who hasn’t remotely earned it? We’re in Congress, not your cult.

We do, however, look forward to returning to our chamber and this custom after the 2028 national election. Then, presumably, there will be a president who obeys laws and facts rather than, as any dictator might say, his own “morality.”

But as for your SOTU next week, fugeddabouit as we say in Brooklyn. Include us out.

Sen. Chuck Schumer

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries”