Ivan Eland: ‘We Don’t Have a System Where Electing a President Makes Him an Emperor!’

EXCERPT:

ELAND: "Well, certainly he was elected by the Electoral College and he is a legitimate president of the United States. But we have had court rulings before that have told presidents that they can’t do various things. If they have their role, they stick up for people’s rights and they also monitor the checks and balances to make sure one branch doesn’t get out of control. I think the executive branch, not just Donald Trump but other presidents, probably since Harry Truman but certainly since George W. Bush and Obama and Trump, it has really gotten way too powerful from what the framers of the Constitution originally wanted. We don’t have a system where electing the president makes him an emperor and that is the beauty of the system, we do get pushback. Certainly in 1952 the Supreme Court blocked Harry Truman’s nationalization of the steel industry or I should say confiscation of the steel industry, and those steel companies were private companies. And the reason they did it was because Truman used his 'inherent power' to go against congressional wishes. That is what we are seeing here. It's an exact relationship between those two events, the Youngstown Steel case of 1952 and what is happening here.”