Despite Court Losses, Trump Secures Significant Expansion of Presidential Power

A crushing blow for Trump at the Supreme Court. In a major loss for the president, the Supreme Court today shutting down his efforts to meddle in the upcoming election, two of the conservative justices joined the liberal justices to allow states to continue counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day. Trump did not take it well. The mail-in ballot ruling, which was a little bit surprising, gives people more time to vote illegally, let's say. Now, of course, there's no evidence of widespread fraud when it comes to mail-in ballots. And frankly, sometimes it's frustrating to even have to say it that way. They've looked and looked and looked. There hasn't been fraud on a widespread basis in mail-in ballots. But Trump has voted by mail the last time he voted, frankly, in Florida back in March for a special election. It's not the only time either. And this is not the only defeat that Trump suffered at the Supreme Court today. The justices declined to hear Trump's appeal in the civil case, which found him liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, which means that Trump still has to pay Carroll $5 million in damages. Now, those were two stinging defeats. So Trump today did cling to one victory, which does give him even more power. The slaughter case was the big case today. That was really a big case. It gives me the right, and not me, it gives a president the right to do what the president should have the right to do. And it's very interesting. It's a big ruling. So at the heart of this ruling is Trump's firing of Rebecca Slaughter without cause. She's one of the only Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission. And then she sued Trump. Now, Trump won, which is something he is not going to let anyone forget. He said today, today's historic slaughter decision by the Supreme Court is the greatest increase in presidential power in the past 100 years. Such a monumental ruling at such an important time. Now, Rebecca Slaughter is going to be our guest in just a moment. But as Slaughter will tell us tonight, the FTC is supposed to be an independent agency that protects Americans against harmful business practices. And Trump did not seem to want Democrats on that commission. So he fired Slaughter along with another Democrat. Meanwhile, the titans of the business world and the media world, the very people that the FTC is supposed to be policing to make sure that they are protecting consumers' best interests. Well, the CEOs of Apple, Meta, Alphabet were all front and center at Trump's inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg attended the UFC fights on Trump's birthday earlier this month. Tim Cook went to China with Trump and their companies donated to his ballroom. So this decision from the Supreme Court does empower Trump to squash dissent when he wants to, which, of course, could open the door to potential corruption. That is the very thing Trump's critics are claiming after The New York Times reported on a billion dollar mining deal between Trump and Kazakhstan. According to The New York Times, the deal will note American company access to one of the world's largest untapped reserves of tungsten. Tungsten is a metal the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods. And here's the twist. Investors in the deal reportedly have ties to Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Jr., along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sons. The Trump sons stand to profit from that deal. And obviously, there is a whole lot more where that came from. How much power do you think that this ruling now gives Trump? A massive amount of power. I mean, the president said it himself. It is the largest expansion of executive power in over 100 years. And that is exactly why we should be worried about it. So, you know, the court did hand Trump a number of defeats today, including a ruling, interestingly, that he can't fire Lisa Cook at the Fed. Why do you think your case, which obviously involved the FTC, is different? Well, I don't really think that it is different. I think it came out differently. And there were only two justices who ruled against me and for Governor Cook at the Fed. And I find it very hard to square those two decisions from any kind of rational, intelligible standpoint. The only difference that I can ascertain is that the Supreme Court and those two justices who switched the positions in those cases decided that there is a Wall Street exception. And that is exactly part of the problem. I mean, the FTC, it sounds like part of the alphabet soup of agencies, but it's the agency Congress set up to be bipartisan, multi-member and independent in order for it to be able to check the most powerful corporations in the country and keep them from getting ahead by cheating and lying to the American people and enriching themselves at the people's expense. And so for working people who depend on agencies like the FTC and the other independent agencies, the Supreme Court has said, no, we will not have that independent check. You will not be watchdogs anymore. You will be lapdogs. But for the Fed, which has some responsibility for Wall Street, the Supreme Court has said, OK, but you can stay as a watchdog. And I think that that's really problematic. So Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority and he wrote, Rebecca, in the ruling, and I quote him, the president must have the assistance of officers he can trust, although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the president would prefer to work. Neither Congress nor the courts may saddle with him, with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the president's power are subject to removal by him. And it continued. But what do you make of that argument that Trump won the election and he gets to pick anyone appointed and get rid of those he doesn't like? Yeah, so that's essentially the theory of the unitary executive. It's a theory to which Chief Justice Roberts has been an adherent for a very long time. But I think it is inconsistent with both the constitutional system of checks and balances, which says that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, not that he shall do whatever he wants as a matter of policy. He has to execute laws as passed by Congress. And those laws set up both the structure of these eight government agencies and give them substantive powers. It's also inconsistent with the historical tradition of our country, dating all the way back to the founding, when the sinking fund, which Justice Sotomayor talked about in her dissent, had officers who could not be removed. And the common thread in these agencies that Congress set up with these limited removal protections is that they are there to protect economic integrity so that the same way independent directors on corporate boards keep a CEO from just giving out favors to friends at the expense of shareholders, these agencies were designed to protect American taxpayers and American people from crony capitalism. Kristen, Trump is talking up his one big win from the Supreme Court today. But as you've been talking to your sources, you've been learning, I understand, that he is incredibly angry tonight about another ruling from the court. Well, he's completely livid over the mail-in ballot ruling. And, of course, part of this is the justices who decided to rule against him or this case. Just a reminder, this, of course, was the Republican National Committee challenging a Mississippi law that allowed voting to be counted or votes to be counted that were mail-in ballots that came in after Election Day. But if you look at the justices who voted against Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, one of them sticks out in particular, and that is Amy Coney Barrett, who President Trump himself appointed to the bench and has been growing increasingly frustrated. We've reported multiple times that behind closed doors he has slammed Amy Coney Barrett, saying that she has not stepped up. She has not done basically what he put her in place to do.