To the editor: A letter writer says that President-elect Donald Trump won a “decisive victory.”
The vote count now shows him having a plurality, not a majority of the popular vote. He has 49.9% of the vote to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 48.4%. There was a small amount of votes cast for third-party candidates.
That is not a mandate to do as he pleases with his Cabinet picks. Not even a decisive majority would give him that. He has to have them vetted and voted upon in the Senate, just like any other past president has been required to do.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution does not, as he has asserted in the past, entitle him to do whatever he wants.
But then, it also does not explicitly grant him immunity from criminal law, and as the Supreme Court showed, the Constitution can be twisted to protect him from the consequences of his actions. Protecting the nation from those consequences, however, will be more difficult; those can’t be waved off by a vote of the court.
Bill Seckler, Riverside