'More like an audition': MSNBC legal analyst raises alarm over judge's pro-Trump dissent
Reacting to one of Donald Trump’s latest legal setbacks, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin explained on Wednesday morning that the sole dissent in an immigration case supporting Donald Trump is “just as important” as the ruling itself because of what it portends for the future.
Late Tuesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) could not be applied in the case of the Venezuelan immigrants the president wants to deport because it found no evidence of an “invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign power.
At the center of the case was Trump’s use of the AEA as a work-around to support the deportation plans, which two judges balked at.
Speaking with “Way Too Early” host Ali Vitali, Rubin instead focused on the dissent by Judge Andrew Oldham, who was placed on the bench by Trump in 2018, and singled out his explanation for supporting the president as alarming.
In his dissent, Oldham lectured his colleagues over second-guessing Trump and wrote, “The majority’s approach to this case is not only unprecedented—it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent.”
That led Rubin to urge viewers to remember Oldham’s name.
"The dissent here is as important as that two-judge majority opinion,“ she told the host. “Judge Oldham is expected to be among the front-runners for any Supreme Court seat that Trump has to fill. And his dissent, which he says represents the first time in the 227-year history of the nation that a court has blocked a president from using the AEA and very strongly reads to me more like an audition than a legal opinion.”