President-elect Joe Biden is warning those on the Left that he won’t have the executive authority to accomplish everything they want.
In leaked audio from a Tuesday conversation with civil rights leaders, Biden was asked to take strong executive actions.
“I want to ask that you consider issuing an executive order to create a national task force to examine challenges to our democracy — a national voter access commission,” one person said, according to audio released Thursday by the Intercept.
Another participant asked for a “national database on police misconduct” and “an investigation into state and local prisons and jails to find out precisely what is happening” amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I would hope that on the first day, you start doing the things with your executive orders to restore some dignity to law enforcement in our community,” Rev. Al Sharpton told the president-elect.
“I am not going to violate the Constitution,” Biden said. “Executive authority that my progressive friends talk about is way beyond the bounds.”
Biden assured those on the call that he would use his powers as president to “undo every single damn thing this guy has done by executive authority,” but he added, “I’m not going to exercise executive authority where it’s a question, where I can come along and say, ‘I can do away with assault weapons.’ There’s no executive authority to do away with that. And no one has fought harder to get rid of assault weapons than me, me, but you can’t do it by executive order. We do that, next guy comes along and says, ‘Well, guess what? By executive order, I guess everybody can have machine guns again.’ So, we gotta be careful.”
The former vice president also warned that Republicans had been able to skew messaging on police reform to make gains in 2020’s elections.
“I also don’t think we should get too far ahead [of] ourselves on dealing with police reform in that because they’ve already labeled us as being ‘defund the police’ anything we put forward in terms of the organizational structure to change policing — which, I promise you, will occur. Promise you.”
Biden added, “That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police. We’re not. We’re talking about holding them accountable.”
None of these talking points were mentioned in a summary of the call from Biden’s transition team.
“They discussed their joint priorities including advancing racial equity across the board, enforcing civil rights, and assembling a diverse White House and Cabinet that represents America,” the statement read. “They expressed the need to make sure the public knows the historic nature of many of the president-elect’s diverse nominees and the need to galvanize the community around making sure that the Senate confirms them.”
