Speaker Johnson Calls for Immunity Clause to Protect Presidents
A president must have immunity while in office, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declared Friday, adding that without it, a commander in chief would be “looking over his shoulder on every critical decision.”
In a wide-ranging interview on Politico’s podcast Playbook Deep Dive, Johnson said an immunity clause is “important.” The remarks start at the 36:38 mark.
“I mean, whoever is the commander in chief, if you’re elected by all the people in this country, you should be trusted with the office,” Johnson said. “And we need the person, having given them that trust, to be able to make critical decisions on a dime without worrying about some sort of liability for it. I think that’s a really important principle.”
Pressed for an elaboration on “absolute immunity,” Johnson conceded: “It’s not a question I’ve wrestled with. I might write you a long dissertation on it give me some time to think it through.”
“But I think as a general premise, I think it makes sense to most people,” he declared. “I think it’s common sense that you can’t have the president sitting in the Oval Office worried about whether some lawyer or some local D.A. somewhere is going to go after him. It’d be a serious problem.”
Johnson also praised former President Donald Trump — who has insisted he had absolute immunity when he was in the Oval Office — for his “thick skin” amid criticism and lawsuits related to his term before and during his term in office.
“I’ve been taking arrows here for six months,” Johnson said of his term as House Speaker. “Donald Trump has taken nuclear incoming every single day since he came down the golden staircase. I mean, you can’t say that guy’s not tough as nails. No one else could endure what he has had to endure. Nobody.”
The Speaker also said he didn’t anticipate a nationwide ban on abortion, even if there is GOP control next year of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
“Look, I am a lifelong pro-lifer. I’m a product of a teen pregnancy. And so I believe in the sanctity of human life,” he said. “It’s also an important article of faith for me. But I have 434 colleagues here. All of us have our own philosophical principles that we live by, but you have to have a political consensus.”
“Before you can have political consensus on a very contentious issue like this, you have to have cultural consensus,” he added. “And I think there’s a lot of work to do to build a culture of life and educate people on the importance of that and to really live up to the principles of our nation’s birth certificate, which is the declaration that ‘all men are created equal.’ And there’s value in that. But we have a long way to go to build the political consensus here to do anything in that regard.”
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
