Fact Check: No, President Trump Did Not Say Article II Gave Him Absolute Power

CLAIM: President Donald Trump believes that he has absolute power under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and must therefore be impeached.

VERDICT: False. Trump was talking specifically about the power to fire Robert Mueller.

The House impeachment managers — all Democrats — argued Tuesday at the start of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate that Trump believed that Article II of the Constitution meant he can do “whatever I want.” Both Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) presented deceptively edited video that cur out the context of Trump’s words.

Breitbart News noted:

As Breitbart News’ Charlie Spiering pointed out when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) first misquoted the president as saying, “Article II says I can do whatever I want,” Trump had been specifically referring to the power to hire and fire executive officials, specifically Special Counsel Robert Mueller — whom he did not, in the end, fire.

Later, during House Judiciary Committee hearings, Democrat counsel Norm Eisen — ironically, once the “ethics” czar for President Barack Obama — used a deceptively edited clip of a speech Trump gave in July 2019 to the youth group Turning Point USA. The context, again, was the Mueller investigation — but Democrats edited that out of the video he presented to constitutional “expert” witness Noah Feldman, who participated with Eisen in the misleading charade:

The full original quote Democrats are misusing to impeach Trump @CSPAN https://t.co/IwKOiVFjkV

— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) December 6, 2019

Democrat @NormEisen and "Expert" @NoahRFeldman Misquoted Trump @CSPAN https://t.co/YyrurUsILG

— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) December 6, 2019

Schiff and Laufkran used the deceptively edited clip regardless of the fact that it had been debunked last month.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.