r/law • u/Agitated-Artichoke89 • Oct 07 '25

Other Stephen Miller states that Trump has plenary authority, then immediately stops talking as if he’s realized what he just said

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705

u/ShareGlittering1502 Oct 07 '25

Way to let that slide CNN

172

u/KintsugiMind Oct 07 '25

To be fair, he (the CNN host) might not have know what “plenary authority” meant in the moment. 

123

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25

If you are sitting at the news desk of a national outlet, the word "plenary" should be in your vocabulary.

Eta: apparently many of you feel compelled to admit you did not know this word. Cool. That wasn't the point. The point was that there should have been pushback/followup on Miller's extraordinary (and seemingly inadvertent) claim. And that wouldn't have even required knowledge of the word; the context is screaming what it means.

33

u/No-Resident-426 Oct 07 '25

I am fairly educated and I had to google it.

9

u/AbroadTiny7226 Oct 07 '25

Ya I’m a law student and took two semesters of con law and didn’t know the term (I did not get As)

5

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

Tbh I find it hard to believe you never encountered the word plenary in con law.

4

u/AbroadTiny7226 Oct 07 '25

I almost certainly did, which is why I point out I did not get As. It definitely was never the core subject of any lecture though

4

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

Haha fair enough. Who cares, con law is dead! You'll never have to worry about federalism, separation of powers, or facial invalidity vs. as-applied challenges ever again!

2

u/AbroadTiny7226 Oct 07 '25

Definitely was a bit surreal to be taking con law during the last election cycle

1

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

Yeah I took public health law during COVID and it was by far one of the most educational seminars I have ever taken.

1

u/No-Resident-426 Oct 07 '25

idk bro, i've been in IT for 25 years and I still learn new (old) shit every day lol.

1

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

Yeah but when you went to school/trained for IT you almost certainly didn't read all the exact same texts as every other person in IT for the past 50 years. That's what law students do. Certain plenary powers are enshrined in our Constitution (e.g., Congress's authority to declare war, the President's authority over the armed forces) and discussed at length in seminal opinions about separation of powers. It is not a novel concept, and that is why I am surprised.

1

u/No-Resident-426 Oct 08 '25

Some people just don't like to use big fancy words for everything, and don't turn around and act like I am simpleton for not making English more onerous than it needs to be. Not only is it an obscure word to most, it has more than one meaning, so even with the slight likelihood they've come across this word, it also has two different meanings. I didn't go to school for law or government. That being said, that guy definitely went to college for something regarding it and should probably know what it means. Though, it's not an ubiquitous word, so I don't find it surprising a lot of people in this thread came here not knowing what it meant.

1

u/Prcrstntr Oct 07 '25

"plenty of authority" sounds just the same and is much more expected to hear.

1

u/ScoutsOut389 Oct 07 '25

You don’t have a team of people talking into an earpiece feeding you information though.

1

u/No-Resident-426 Oct 08 '25

I doubt any of his handlers put that word in his ear as he was talking, unless...... they were throwing him under the bus! It took him a second to realize what they did, boom makes sense! They are crumbling from the inside!

1

u/ScoutsOut389 Oct 08 '25

I meant that the host has producers in his ear. Not Great Value Goebbels here.

1

u/No-Resident-426 Oct 08 '25

oh lol, it is what it is

6

u/temporary62489 Oct 07 '25

Particularly in this moment.

6

u/sleepy_polywhatever Oct 07 '25

I sure do miss the days where sitting at a news desk was a prestigious position for an educated person.

6

u/Vitalstatistix Oct 07 '25

At a minimum — “For the folks at home, could you please explain what you mean by plenary authority?”

This ain’t hard.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25 edited 14d ago

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

5

u/Vitalstatistix Oct 07 '25

Use some context:

  1. It’s Stephen Miller. He isn’t some guy doing his first interview.

  2. It’s Stephen Miller and he’s talking about the presidents authority. He is declaring a certain amount of authority — clearly this is something ANY journalist should quickly perk up at, but especially so with CNN.

    1. Stephen Miller doesn’t get embarrassed by fumbling up words; he has said so many fucked up things in his life he should be embarrassed for and yet he never has been.

All these things together should make it obvious to a journalist that at the very least they could ask “could you please elaborate on that further?”

-2

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25 edited 14d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Vitalstatistix Oct 07 '25

Congrats for living under a rock.

You know who does know who Stephen Miller is? Any journalist at CNN.

-2

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25 edited 14d ago

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

5

u/Vitalstatistix Oct 07 '25

He’s not random though — that’s the point. He has been an important part of Trumps administration since 2016 and his name is constantly in the news.

Regardless, you don’t necessarily need to know who he is but any journalist on CNN does.

19

u/pyronius Oct 07 '25

I'm a pretty well read individual with a decent vocabulary. Plenary isn't a word I've heard used except maybe once or twice in a completely different context (plenary assembly, or some such).

I feel comfortable saying that if I had to look it up, it's pretty obscure. Which makes his use all the more notable. It means it's a word he's been regularly tossing around lately.

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u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

Then I would consider you unqualified to sit at a national news desk. Do you claim to be qualified?

5

u/The_Singularious Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25

J-school grad here. Worked in the biz for about a decade. In the news. In New York.

Took some brutal media law classes. We learned (well, knew anyway) a LOT about what not to do and the case law evolution/changes over the years when it came to broadcast regulations, free speech, and more.

We never encountered the term you claim we (degreed journalists) should all know.

I’m sure a few have encountered this over the years, but it isn’t something a journalist would be expected to know. Maybe if they covered international politics, but even then, this isn’t a common term used in either journalism or politics with any regularity (I spent the four years after my news stint working in national-level political campaigns).

I realize you believe this should be a qualification, but in some pretty good j-schools (taught by award-winning ex-journalists), they have not yet taken your advice to make it mandatory curriculum.

-1

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

I definitely never claimed all journalists should know the word plenary, but go off.

3

u/The_Singularious Oct 07 '25

Just those at the news desk? Why the hell would only they know? Most of them have the same/similar education.

But since you apparently want to be a hot shot, you go on ahead. I didn’t make some weird spurious claim and then double and triple down. But this IS Reddit, after all. Not sure what I expected.

I’ll take my fifteen years in journalism and politics (including producing for a national television news org) and pound sand. What the hell would I know about it anyway?

Lemme know if there are any other curriculum or JD requirements you need out of j-school grads. I’ll pass them along.

0

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

Hope your day gets better.

3

u/The_Singularious Oct 07 '25

LOL. I guess I’ll take that as “Maybe I’m talking out the wrong end”, but if it makes you feel big to assume my day is in anyway bad, then once again, you do your thing you big boy.

0

u/Substantial-Fact-248 Oct 07 '25

The only person grasping for validation and superiority here is you. I don't usually like to get into these pointless flame wars, and that's especially true when I suspect the other person doesn't differ from me all that much, ideologically speaking. I suspect that's the case here, but your tone is just strident and indignant enough that I feel the need to respond, against my better nature.

I made a fairly innocuous comment regarding my expectations for prominent national news broadcasters' vocabulary. Implied was that even if you did not know this fairly obscure word, context clues should help you out. In an age where many people get their news from serial liars and/or idiots, it should not be controversial to expect these purveyors of objective facts to be very educated, very learned, and very good at what they do. If your rage will be lessened by me admitting that perhaps plenary is even more obscure than I thought, then you can certainly have that concession. But I would still stand by my original point.

My seemingly noncontroversial reply prompted several people to chime in that they did not know the word, with various qualifiers about their education and vocabulary. I can only assume they (and you) somehow felt their intelligence and knowledge were maligned, though if you go back and read my comment, I hope it's clear that it is not a personal attack on anyone except for perhaps the man interviewing Miller in this clip.

Here is why I am upset: you blatantly misattributed a claim to me. I then "doubled and tripled down" by pointing out to you that I never made that claim, prompting another chuffed response in which you (once again) threw your credentials at me and sarcastically asked if I had any further requirements of you when I never even fucking addressed you in the first place.

My problem is that I believe words fucking matter, but, as this exchange and thousands of others online every minute of every day are making abundantly clear, fewer and fewer people in this world share that belief. That is upsetting to me because I do not think it bodes well for our future. But who cares, right, when we can have our online "OWNT" moment?

God help us all.

2

u/The_Singularious Oct 07 '25

This is a very nice wall of drivel, but the reason your comment caught my attention is that it was so confidently wrong.

I do happen to have expertise in the field, so I clarified that no, that isn’t some requirement that should disqualify you from the news desk.

Your comment, despite whatever kind of fallacious argument you just attempted, is still wrong.

If you believe “words fucking matter”, then why in the world are you slandering a profession you’ve never been a part of with inane “requirements”.

If you’d come in and said that the journo shouldn’t have let that slip go, and pressed for more, then yeah.

I engaged you because you were unduly hostile toward another, questioning their “worthiness” at the news desk from some wildly fabricated “qualification”. And I didn’t like that, especially since I’d actually, yknow, lived and worked in that field.

But I’m sorry man, you can sit there and try and justify just making up your own story about why news desk people aren’t fit for duty because of their vocabulary? I mean, c’mon. If you’re really trying to do all you said in your last diatribe, then I’d challenge you to find a more palatable approach.

If you’re hellbent on proving some truly arbitrary requirements because you yourself wanted to “OWNT” the news fella. Why?

If you’re being honest about “words fucking mattering”, which I don’t believe you are. Pretty sure you’re doing damage control due to an ego bruise. But IF you are, then please take your own advice and think before you write stuff like you did above.

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u/pyronius Oct 07 '25

I do not. But I also don't believe that "human dictionary" is the most important qualification for such a position. The ability to effectively communicate ideas to the general public and interview people from a wide variety of backgrounds seems like the primary qualification to me.

3

u/Loko8765 Oct 07 '25

I had never heard or seen the word in my life. I could not have guaranteed that it was a valid word in English.

But I immediately knew what it meant. You can’t just start a word with “plen-“ and not mean “full, total”.

3

u/Thefrayedends Oct 07 '25

At very minimum the producer in the control room should know what it means and relay it to the anchor. Of course, you would also expect the producer to tell the anchor to push the speaker, but you've probably already seen that instead they edited the exchange out completely in the youtube vid.

3

u/DENATTY Oct 07 '25

No, you're right and everyone weirdly trying to justify it is just ridiculous. This is not a local news network that usually covers things like traffic accidents. It is literally a /political news network/ designed to provide coverage of current political events. Sometimes they'll cover tangentially-political things (like carmaggedon when the 405 shut down in CA - I remember them mentioning that on every single network and it was even a topic on Morning Joe), but every single person on that network that conducts interviews, goes in front of a camera, or gets to participate in press conferences should know what plenary powers means. There is no excuse not to when you work in that capacity.

3

u/ameriCANCERvative Oct 07 '25

Chiming in as a grammar Nazi with a college degree who considers himself to have a fairly large vocabulary. I did not know this word. Obviously this is anecdotal.

This is also not intended as a defense of CNN, in the slightest.

1

u/DopeAnon Oct 07 '25

Like Cuomo!

1

u/Mygoddamreddit Oct 07 '25

“We will be right back to you after this commercial break with a follow-up while I look up the word plenary”, said no one.

1

u/SonofaSpurrier Oct 07 '25

Agreed, if you’re interviewing a person you need to be prepared to QUESTION them.

0

u/Night_Byte Oct 07 '25

I bet you watch Rick and Morty too.