Harry Litman - Trump Whiffs at the Supreme Court

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Since the election, Donald Trump has been posturing himself as already the sorta kinda president. Both in his efforts to nullify the criminal prosecution against him, as well as in government functions, he is taking his victory—and the “massive” and “unprecedented and powerful mandate” he asserts it provides—as a general license to kibitz, as if a “president-elect” were a position of constitutional stature.

Earlier this week Trump plunged into a major Supreme Court case—TikTok v. Garland—with a bizarre and utterly amateurish filing. The brief is in his personal capacity (the only legal capacity he currently has) and bears the name “President Donald J. Trump.” It is in some ways a classic in the Trump genre, larded up with irrelevant and hyperbolic (or simply false) characterizations of his greatness. But its legal argument breaks new ground even by Trump’s standards: it is wildly off-base and unprofessional. Most notably, it exhorts the justices to take action that any informed observer would understand the Court has no power to take.

TikTok v Garland is shaping up to be one the Court’s most important decisions involving social media. It is also significant in its own right givenTikTok’s prominence in the U.S. media landscape, where it has 170 million monthly users (and more than one billion worldwide).

The case involves a challenge to a statute, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” signed into law in April 2024. The Act prohibits third-party service providers (e.g. Google) from distributing or maintaining TikTok. People who already have downloaded the app can still use it, but as a practical matter, the prohibition on third parties would make the application widely unavailable.

https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/trump-whiffs-at-the-supreme-court

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. In TikTok case, Trump's lawyers cling to an unfortunate GOP myth

One of the most persistent myths in contemporary politics is that Trump is a world-class negotiator and dealmaker. The evidence suggests otherwise.
https://bsky.app/profile/stevebenen.com/post/3lejxurhl7s2p

In the SCOTUS filing in the TikTok case, Trump's lawyer said he alone "possesses the consummate deal-making expertise ... to negotiate a resolution."

The idea that Trump is a world-class negotiator is a ridiculous myth, which has lingered for far too long.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/tiktok-case-trumps-lawyers-cling-unfortunate-gop-myth-rcna185743

The move sparked litigation, and the case is currently pending at the U.S. Supreme Court. As NBC News reported, it was against this backdrop that the president-elect’s lawyers filed a curious brief.

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause implementation of a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. starting Jan. 19 if the app is not sold by its Chinese parent company. The court is due to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10.

Ordinarily in a court filing such as this one, we’d expect to see an argument urging the justices to rule one way or another based on legal merits. But in the filing from D. John Sauer — the president-elect’s lawyer who’s slated to be nominated for U.S. solicitor general — Team Trump instead asked the high court to simply delay the current law’s deadline in order to allow the incoming administration to pursue a new and different policy.

This is, to be sure, a strange approach to jurisprudence. But I was also intrigued by the specific pitch included in the court filing.

“President Trump alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the brief said......

But the evidence of Trump actually succeeding on this front does not exist. There were literally zero instances in which he successfully brought Democratic and Republican leaders together and negotiated a major legislative breakthrough. Indeed, toward the end of his first term, Trump largely gave up on even trying to make deals with Congress.

The Washington Post reported in August 2020, “The president who pitched himself to voters as the consummate negotiator and ultimate dealmaker has repeatedly found his strategies flummoxed by the complexities and pressures of Washington lawmaking.” This came on the heels of the Post’s Jackson Diehl explaining, in reference to Trump: “He’s not up to serious negotiation. He can’t be expected to seriously weigh costs and benefits, or make complex trade-offs. He’s good at bluster, hype and showy gestures, but little else. In short, he may be the worst presidential deal maker in modern history.”

With this in mind, as Trump’s lawyers tell the Supreme Court that the president-elect “alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise ... to negotiate a resolution to save” TikTok, I have a follow-up question: Why in the world would anyone believe this, given his record of failed negotiations?

trump is not a negotiator in the real world.