Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat suggested the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald Trump’s favor to grant presidents total immunity for official acts is effectively the “autocrat’s fantasy.”
“Authoritarianism, at root, is about taking rights away from the many — that’s Dobbs, and there’s also voting rights that come into play — and allowing the few, the cronies, the oligarchs, the leader, most of all, to have no checks or fewer regulations on their lawlessness,” she said on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Monday.
“So it’s about transforming the rule of law into ‘rule by the lawless,’” she continued. “And so removing immunity from the head of state is the autocrat’s fantasy. It’s why Trump admires Xi Jinping and [Vladimir] Putin and all those autocrats, because that’s his fantasy, because he is so corrupt.”
Ben-Ghiat called Monday’s 6-3 decision “unspeakable.”
“It’s the product of these far-right activists who are using the court to, you know, destroy democracy from within,” she said.
The court’s six conservative justices agreed, in the ruling, that Trump is immune from prosecution for official acts undertaken during his presidency.
The question of what constitutes an official act will now need to be parsed by lower courts, effectively ending chances of Trump’s federal election conspiracy case going to trial before the November election.
Should Trump win, he could order the Justice Department to drop the case and another federal case against him.
See Ben-Ghiat’s commentary on MSNBC below.
