Why Would Even These Corrupt Supremes WANT to Help Trump?

The Supreme Court has already shown itself willing to aid a criminal in defeating the Rule of Law — and in helping him become President of the United States. The fundamental corruption of the Republican-appointed majority has been demonstrated in multiple ways.

I speak as someone who has paid close and passionate attention to the Court since my late teens, when a course taught by a genuine constitutional scholar lit my fire. In the 1960s, the Court’s arc bent toward justice: expanding freedom, protecting the weak, leveling the playing field. The right to counsel. Equal representation. An end to racial discrimination.

It was a striking improvement over the corporatist Courts that had long aided the exploitation of the working class. The story seemed to be one of progress.

But that upward arc has long since reversed. Today’s Supreme Court has descended to a place more fundamentally disreputable than even the Courts that gave us Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) — the infamous decisions that enshrined white supremacy, the total domination of Black Americans by whites in one major region of the nation.

But today’s Court is corrupt on a far broader front. It isn’t merely aligned with one evil force, as the Dred Scott Court was with the Slave Power. This Court has been aiding and abetting the overthrow of the American constitutional order itself.

This Court made it possible for Trump to regain the presidency. No Court faithful to the Constitution would have let the insurrection issue simply disappear. An adjudicated opinion had declared that Trump had incited an insurrection — and under the 14th Amendment, that made him ineligible to be on the ballot. Trump problem solved.

But then came the presidential immunity decision, which exposed the Court’s utter corruption. It deliberately delayed the case long enough for Trump to run out the clock, escaping trial for the most serious crimes in American history. And worse: by putting one man above the law — and not just any man, but the most powerful person in the nation — the Court brazenly violated the spirit of the Constitution. It revealed just how far the “conservative” majority was willing to go to help Trump back into power.

A decision so indefensible that experts never imagined it: the Supreme Court siding with the Criminal against the Rule of Law.

It has long been clear that the majority on this court have no integrity. They have been groomed to be corporatists and partisans and to formulate false and contorted arguments to help their side.

So I’m not asking why the Supremes would be so corrupt as to help a criminal become President, but why they would want someone as reckless and crazy as Donald Trump.

If he wrecks the economy by destroying the Fed’s independence, what plutocrat benefits? If he launches a one-man trade war with negative consequences all around, what corporatist wants him in a position to do that?

So why is it that this Court played an essential role in enabling Trump’s amazing comeback, and now  –since he became President again — has repeatedly helped Trump escape from rulings in the lower courts that have argued convincingly that Trump is acting illegally in this way and that?

So: Did the Court think that Trump would be more benign, and more sane, than he has proved to be? Are they OK with the way he’s assaulting the Rule of Law – despite their all being lifetime practitioners of the law, and at the peak of the Empire of the Law? 

(What is it going to mean to sit on the Supreme Court, if it is not what the law says but what the tyrant says that will rule?)

Of course, if they had integrity, they would do what they took an oath to do: defend the Constitution (against Donald Trump’s assaults). But they long since aligned themselves corruptly with power-striving and greedy interests, and abandoned a concern for Justice or a reasonable application of the Constitution.

But they and the interests they serve have good reason to want something not so out of control and bonkers as Donald Trump. Yet, they don’t seem eager to get that bull out of the china shop before everything is broken.

One possibility is that the Federalist Society has shaped a Court aligned not only with plutocracy but with fascism. Perhaps they calculate that what Trump delivers — troops in the street, defiance of courts, violations of citizens’ constitutional rights — is, on balance, a net gain for the regime change they seek.

I haven’t given up on the possibility that the Court will decide Trump must be stopped. A looming test is whether they uphold or overturn the Appeals Court decision striking down most of his tariff actions. Upholding would show that even this Court still recognizes some limits — that not even Trump can shred the law at will. But if they reverse, it will confirm the deeper truth: that the Court is not just tolerating Trump’s assaults, but choosing to be his accomplice in the regime change from democracy to dictatorship.