Democratic lawmaker who taught law school says Trump gets ‘absolute F’ on constitutional knowledge

Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that President Trump gets an “absolute F” for his knowledge of the Constitution following remarks mischaracterizing the executive powers afforded to presidents.

Trump said Tuesday that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”

{mosads}He later added, on the eve of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony, that he doesn’t “even talk about that because they did a report and there was no obstruction.”

During an interview with CNN, Porter told host Andrew Cuomo that Trump deserves a failing grade for his knowledge of the Constitution. 

“I say this to you as someone who has graded a lot of law students in my life, that is an ‘F’ answer,” she said. “Like an absolute ‘F.’ ”

Porter was a law professor at University of California-Irvine before being elected to Congress.

Porter, who said she also teaches “the Constitution to Boy Scouts,” went on to say that “one of the things that I drive home to the scouts — and these are 12- and 13- and 14-year-old boys who understand this concept that the president doesn’t — is that the largest sets of power in our Constitution reside with the legislature.”

“They reside with Congress,” she added. “Why? Because Congress is the closest to the people. Right? And so this idea that Article II is somehow some unlimitless residual pot of power is simply a fiction.”

“And it is something he is simply saying and trying to make it true by repeating it,” Porter said.

Trump referred to Article II while discussing the Russia investigation in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last month, when the president said Article II “allows me to do whatever I want,” including the power to fire Mueller.

“Article II would have allowed me to fire him,” he said at the time.

The month before that, Trump brought up Article II while speaking to reporters about the Russia probe.

“Read Article II, which gives the president powers that you wouldn’t believe. But I don’t even have to rely on Article II,” he said. “There was no crime. There was no obstruction. There was no collusion.”