OPINION:
How history repeats itself. Few today probably know how divided the country was right after the adoption of our Constitution in 1787 and the seating of the government in 1789. In the decade of the 1790s, the Federalist Party of Washington, Hamilton and Ames was in power, and the Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison could not stop the Federalists’ agenda.
One such agenda item was the battle over the Jay Treaty in 1796, when Washington sent John Jay to negotiate with Britain. The Republicans despised Britain, since they were on the side of Revolutionary France when those two nations were at war. Washington got his treaty with Britain passed in the Senate, but then Republicans in the House refused to pass the appropriations for the provisions in the treaty. They even demanded to see all of Jay’s notes from his meeting with his counterpart Lord Grenville. Washington decisively told Congress that under no circumstances would they interfere. He shut them down, hard.
President Trump should do the same on this week’s demand by Democrats in the House to interrogate his interpreter from his recent meetings in Russia. Their demand violates the constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the Executive Branch.
HAROLD KNUDSEN
Alexandria
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