Out of Touch: Newsweek Still Thinks Hillary Can Be Installed as President
It may be January of 2018 — one year on from Donald Trump’s inauguration and even further away from Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the general election.
Nevertheless, there are still people who believe that Hillary Clinton can be president. And it’s not just social media kooks, either. We’re talking Newsweek here.
Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency, the venerable publication turned has exhibited symptoms of left-wing rabies, foaming at the mouth at anything involving our commander in chief or those in his party. While the most visible example of this phenomenon has been unstable prevaricator/tentacle hentai aficionado Kurt Eichenwald, he’s far from alone.
Take Maya Rajamani, a Newsweek writer who thinks that Hillary Clinton could still be installed as president should that as-yet unrevealed and unproven evidence of “collusion” between Donald Trump and the Russians somehow present itself.
To be fair, it wasn’t Rajamani’s idea. The original genesis of the Hillary strategy came from outré Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig (never a good sign) from a post he wrote on Medium (an even less promising augury). And yet, it was repeated almost verbatim in Newsweek.
“If Trump did conspire with Russia, the president ‘should resign, or, if he doesn’t, he should be impeached,’ Lessig wrote in his essay. Vice President Mike Pence would also have to either resign or get impeached, which would make House Speaker Paul Ryan the president of the United States, Lessig wrote at the time.
“Given that there is ‘no mechanism in American law for a new election,’ nor ‘a mechanism for correcting the criminal results of the previous election,’ Ryan ought to nominate ‘the person defeated by the treason of his own party, and then step aside, and let her become President,’ (sic) Lessig went on to say.”
I’m going to give you a moment to stop laughing and/or cancel your Newsweek subscription.
When Newsweek reached out to Lessig for his thoughts on how he thought this would happen, he was rather vague about the odds.
“This is one way it could happen,” Lessig told Newsweek. “But that’s very different from saying I think it will happen, or should happen, or (that) the evidence is there for it to happen.”
He added he hadn’t seen “any evidence that’s come out that’s resolved the question, whether there was some conspiracy to steal the election” since he published the essay. Probably because, a year and a half into the Russia investigation, no evidence to that extent has yet been proven, or even hinted at.
“The remedy that I…outline(d) only makes sense if you believe the election was stolen,” Lessig noted. “If you don’t believe the election was stolen, there might have been a hundred other things (Trump) did that would lead you to believe he ought to be removed, but none of those justify the remedy I described.”
While Lawrence Lessig is a relatively skilled legal mind (even though I can’t say I agree with him on a majority of issues), watching him opine on politics is a bit like listening to Woody Allen play clarinet.
It’s clear Lessig’s rant fits into what Thomas Sowell once termed the “arrogance of intellectuals”; “The fatal misstep of intellectuals is assuming that superior ability within a particular realm can be generalized as superior wisdom or morality overall,” the famed economist and pundit once noted.
If Mr. Lessig can induce himself to fall victim to this particular intellectual trap, that’s his own problem, and if it stayed within the anything-goes confines of Medium we’d be just fine with his delusions. The fact that Newsweek felt this was worth anything more than a laugh proves just how desperate, silly and out of touch some media gotten in the service of anti-Trump hysteria.
As for Hillary Clinton, I think it’s safe to say she’s going to be remaining in the woods for the rest of Donald Trump’s term.
H/T The Washington Free Beacon
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