Americans will demand impeachment for President Trump if he chooses to ignore a Supreme Court order regarding his controversial deportations, according to CNN’s Harry Enten.
Trump’s legal wrangle with the Supreme Court took another twist Saturday when a majority of justices voted to temporarily block his latest deportation push, to allow an ongoing American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to play out.
The ruling paused deportations that rely on the Alien Enemies Act, meaning that the scheduled expulsion of a group of Venezuelan men in Texas was stalled.
It was the latest flashpoint in Trump’s battle against the judicial system. And, while CNN’s Harry Enten reported Sunday that most MAGA voters support the president defying the courts, most other Americans would see that as grounds for impeachment.
Citing data from a CBS News/YouGov poll on CNN Newsroom, the data guru said he doesn’t think “Trump would go that far.”
But if he did, 58 percent of the public think he should then be impeached for a third time, and removed from office.
Just 27 percent of GOP voters chose this option, with 39 percent of the opinion that he should stay in office regardless. “Among Republicans it’s just an entirely different universe,” Enten said.
He recalled that the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson, refused to intervene in a Georgia governor’s decision not to release a missionary from prison in 1832, after the Supreme Court ruled that he had been unfairly arrested.
“This would just be basically unprecedented. I kind of go back through my mind, I only think about Andrew Jackson in the late 1820s into the 1830s in which he, in fact, did pretty much ignore Supreme Court rulings to find any sort of precedent for this,” he said.
“And that is why the clear majority of Americans say a president should not ignore a SCOTUS ruling. If he does, he should get impeached and removed. But among Republicans, the plurality say keep him in office.”
Just 19 percent of the overall electorate think Trump should stay in office if this happens.
It comes as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt led the charge against the recent ruling, saying that the administration is “confident we will ultimately prevail against the onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of these terrorist aliens than those of the American people.”
Enten, meanwhile, added that among Republicans a “flip flop, a reversal” occurs when the idea of impeaching judges rather than the president is floated.
Two thirds, or 65 percent, of the overall public oppose this. “But look among Republicans, hello!” Enten added, showing that a huge 59 percent of those voters are keen on the idea.
“So the bottom line is if you get Donald Trump disagreeing with the judges going against him, which overall the public says Donald Trump should be impeached for, Republicans feel the exact opposite,” Enten explained.
“They feel the judge should be impeached! It’s truly a switcheroo. Republicans and the overall electorate are just completely on different sides when it comes to judges reviewing Trump’s policies and the actions which would have to occur if Trump did not,” he said.
At the top of the segment, Enten noted that conservative-voting Americans are “on a different planet” to the rest of the U.S. when it comes to Trump.
On the subject of whether judges should be allowed to review Trump’s policies, a substantial minority of 44 percent of Republicans voted disapprovingly.
That figure is compared to the 23 percent of all other respondents who voted no.
Some 77 percent of the general electorate reported that they think judges should be allowed to perform their judicial duty, while 56 percent of Republican respondents agreed.
“[That’s despite] it being a bedrock of the judicial system, something that has gone on pretty much throughout our entire democracy,” Enten said of the Republican nay voters.
“And yet you get nearly half of Republican voters saying ‘no,’ I didn’t think I’d ever see the day.”
The post CNN Data Guru Has a Warning for Trump About Defying Supreme Court appeared first on The Daily Beast.
