It turns out most of the former Reagan worshiping movement conservatives really didn’t give a damn about anything but their mutual loathing for libs and non-white, non-Christian minorities. But here’s an exception. This man was once revered on the right on a level with Reagan himself:
Charles Fried was a fervent, superior officer on the frontlines of the Reagan Revolution. As solicitor general of the United States from 1985 to 1989, he urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the reining liberal orthodoxies of his day—on abortion, civil rights, executive power and constitutional interpretation.
But the Trump Revolution has proven a bridge too far. As he reveals in a scorching interview with Newsweek‘s Roger Parloff below, Fried has broken ranks.
He denounces a president who is “perhaps the most dishonest person to ever sit in the White House.” As disgusted as he is by President Donald Trump, Fried is, if possible, even more dismayed by William Barr, Trump’s current attorney general, for having stepped up as Trump’s chief apologist. Fried says of Barr. “His reputation is gone.”
Well, his good reputation anyway. His new reputation as the most unethical federal law enforcement leader since J. Edgar Hoover will follow him through history.
An excerpt of the interview:
The first thing, which sets the context, is the rhetoric of the president, both when he was running and ever since. The famous statement that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. The assumption he makes is that by virtue of the November election of 2016, he has a mandate to be the leader of the country. The commander in chief of the country. The German word is fuhrer. The Italian word is duce.
He talks about loyalty. He asks for loyalty. To what? To him personally. Not to the law, which he is supposed to be faithfully executing. This comes up over and over again. Where an official—for instance, the whistleblower—following the law, performing a legally defined duty, following a chain of command, does something that undermines Trump’s personal situation, he defines it as espionage, as sabotage. He looks back to the days when people could get shot for doing that.
Now, maybe if you think of a few occasions in our history—for instance, [President Franklin] Roosevelt’s landslide in 1936—there would have been some color for this view. Unnecessary, in that instance, because Congress and he were absolutely of one mind. But Trump’s opponent got 2.8 million more votes than he did. So there is no remarkable popular mandate to this man. He was constitutionally elected. Fine. What that means is, he has such powers as the Constitution gives him. And those are the executive powers.
As Justice Jackson said in the Steel Seizure Case, that term is not a “grant in bulk of all conceivable executive power.” It is only such executive powers as are specified.The principal one is “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The laws made by Congress. And to do so faithfully. Not trickily. Not underhandedly. Not by transferring [money from one budget to another] and calling emergencies—as with the building of the wall.
Read on … it’s really something. He says all the honorable people have left Trump’s cabinet and now he’s capable of doing serious damage. And more.
It’s really hard to overstate how important Charles Fried has been on the right. That he could be dismissed as a Never-Trump apostate is a perfect illustration of the meaninglessness of intellectual conservatism. in 2020.