
Conservative former Judge Michael Luttig pointed to the recent interview President Donald Trump did and called it possibly the "most important" statement made by a U.S. president.
The comment was part of Trump's interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker that aired Sunday. The questions involved the deported migrants sent to a prison in El Salvador and whether they received the due process required under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
Trump said he didn't know. She then asked Trump if he believed he must uphold the Constitution, and again, he repeated that he was unsure.
“I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court say. They have a different interpretation," Trump said.
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On Monday, Luttig told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that Trump's comments "are perhaps the most important words ever spoken by a president of the United States." He added that the story is "one of the most important stories of our times."
"The president always says what's on his mind, with almost perfect clarity of what is on his mind. Now, sometimes what's on his mind is confusing, but the words that he chooses are perfectly clear as to his confusion," Luttig said.
"Now, the temptation here is to dismiss the president's words as just another gaffe, of which he makes many. But I don't think that we should do that," he explained. "I'm quite confident that the president was saying what is on his mind, and that is that he, the president of the United States, doesn't necessarily believe that he is obligated to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as it is interpreted by the Supreme Court."
He described a school of thought called "constitutional denialism," something he's followed and attempted to understand for most of his career.
"And that strain and school of constitutional thought believes that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution is not necessarily what the Constitution says or means," Luttig said.
Those who believe in that interpretation think that if the Supreme Court wrongly interprets the Constitution, then the president has "no obligation whatsoever to follow the Supreme Court's decisions and orders," the judge explained.
Luttig said he believes this is one of, if not the "single most important issue of our time," because the president must "tell the American people exactly what he does believe about his constitutional obligation to uphold the Constitution of the United States."
See the clip below or at the link here.
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