“Let me just tell you very simply. I’m going to put it very simply. The president of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the United States calls the shots…. When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s going to be. It’s total. It’s total. And the governors know that.”
_DJT #WorstPresidentEver
- President Donald Trump lashed out at a reporter during the coronavirus briefing on April 13, after the reporter asked him to clarify what he did in response to the coronavirus during the month of February.
- “The time that you bought, the argument is that you didn’t use it to prepare hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing,” CBS News reporter Paula Reid asked. “What did you and your administration do with the time the travel ban bought you?”
- “A lot, a lot,” he said, but he failed to provide a list before lambasting Reid and CBS News, calling her a “fake” and claiming the network has a lower approval rating than it ever had before “times, probably, three,” he said.
Fact check: Trump claims it’s his call on when to ‘reopen’ the country. He’s wrong.
But experts — and the Constitution — say Trump is wrong. The authority to require businesses to close in a public health crisis is what is a known as a “police power,” and it is reserved by the Constitution to the states, not to the federal government.
The president didn’t shutter the country — governors did, using authorities afforded to the states to quarantine and isolate — and he can’t simply announce its reopening.
“There’s no statutory authority for the president to do that,” Stanford University law professor Bernadette Meyler said. “And there’s definitely no inherent constitutional authority.
“The quarantine power is one of the states’ oldest powers,” she added.
Watch Governor Cuomo’s remarks on King Trump:
