When he testified earlier this week before the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was asked if he would “respect any Supreme Court decision” that stopped the deployment of U.S. troops in the United States.
Rather that respond to the question, Hegseth said, “What I’m saying is local district judges shouldn’t make foreign policy.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) was asked about that exchange this morning during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”
“So, congressman, when you have the secretary of defense saying that, yes, Marines might defy court orders are we at a constitutional crisis?”
“Well, we clearly have too many DUI hires in the Trump administration starting with Secretary Hegseth,” Raskin replied.
“But look, the Constitution says that the Constitution and federal law are supreme,” the congressman continued. “We have a supreme Constitution, we don’t have a supreme leader. We have no dictators here, we have no kings, we have no monarchs.”
“This is civilian government. and there’s a reason that Congress is in Article 1, and all legislative power is vested in the Congress, just like all judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court and in the inferior courts,” he added. “So what’s the job of the president? To take care that the laws are faithfully executed. So let the message go out through the Trump administration, your job is to faithfully execute the laws that have been adopted by the people in the House and the Senate and signed into law by the president.”
It would be nice if members of the Trump administration would take the time to actually read the Constitution. Then again, even if they did, the chances they’d understand it are slim to none, especially when they’re already three sheets to the wind.
