Law Schools

Republicans So Incensed By Pam Karlan They're Going To Name Barron Trump 'Archduke Of Manhattan'

For the record, this wasn't a joke, it was a statement of fact.

By  
on

Pamela Karlan (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Stanford Law School’s Pam Karlan testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the legal intricacies of impeachment and the strength of the case that Donald Trump has crossed the threshold required for the House to send the case to the Senate. By and large, the famed legal scholar spent her day laying down lucid and well-researched points, but because this is America in 2019, the GOP caucus have reduced her testimony to a one-sentence “joke” she made and the mainstream media have lapped it up because reporting on sideshows is so much easier than grappling with legal concepts.

During the testimony, explaining the Constitution’s bar on titles of nobility, Professor Karlan explained:

“The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. So while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”

Which is… true?

But that didn’t stop the snowflake brigade from seizing on the outrage of Barron even being mentioned in the testimony in what was ultimately a successful attempt to hijack the news cycle.

Melania Trump, as Queen Jadis now calls herself, was rousted from her terrifying winter wonderland to lend her name to a denouncement:

Sponsored

A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.

Can we stop attributing this statement to Melania? Take just a cursory glance at these sentences. It goes out of its way to brand a successful woman as “very angry.” The man with the most recognizably rhetorical blueprint in the world can’t even ghostwrite something without throwing in his voice.

Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump campaign spokesperson, swiftly demanded Democrats condemn Karlan in a bid to make this comment the synecdoche of lengthy testimony.

The Chief of Staff of the GOP followed up by declaring, “He’s a child, not a punchline.” Let’s be entirely clear here… THIS WASN’T A JOKE. Just because people laugh at something doesn’t make it a joke.

Sponsored

At best it was an anti-joke — an attempt to defuse the most obvious smart-ass comeback to the point that Trump cannot issue titles of nobility. Almost as though Karlan has taught classes for years where some student who fancies themselves clever pops up with, “Well, he made a Barron!” and she’s prepared to clear that up off the top.

But it’s so disingenuous. This is the party whose icon of moderatism joked about Chelsea Clinton’s looks while she was an adolescent. In line with Trump’s history of calling women “angry,” he mocked a 16-year-old less than three months ago. Donny Jr. is liking conspiracy theories about Parkland survivors.

These are all efforts to make children into jokes. Noting, accurately, the name of the president’s kid is not.

But Pam Karlan has since apologized for the remark:

“If I can say one thing, I want to apologize for what I said earlier about the president’s son. It was wrong of me to do that,” Karlan said.

That his name was “Barron”? Because you don’t have to apologize for that.

Perhaps this episode uniquely sticks in my craw because Karlan was involved in it. I wrote an article quoting Karlan on a voting rights question, and some guy who wrote a book about how the Black Panther Party got Obama elected by intimidating white voters complained that she was wrong and therefore shouldn’t be cited, so I was made to change the article. She would soon be named U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights. Meaning, for those keeping score, that I changed an article because a conspiracy theorist was confident that he understood voting rights better than a voting rights scholar who was about to be the AAG of Voting Rights.

Some things you just shouldn’t have to apologize for because insecure wimps don’t like hearing accurate statements.

So, for the media, stop reporting the outrage over this like it’s a serious event. Stop reporting that she “apologized” to undermine and weaken her. Try, for a change, to just talk about the substance of a day’s worth of testimony.

But even then, some backbencher or state legislator will throw together a resolution to declare Barron a real noble to own the libs. And then we’ll have another news cycle of this inanity as networks try to stay on top of the “news” they think people want to consume.

When that happens, do your civic duty… turn off the f**king TV.

Stanford law professor apologizes for referencing Barron Trump in impeachment testimony [WABC]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

, , , , ,