That's Why Known Insurrectionists Aren't Allowed to Be President
Someone who previously tried to overthrow the constitutional system was unconstitutionally permitted to become president again and is now… trying to overthrow the constitutional system. Who could have imagined that might happen? Also, be skeptical of the courts.
This one was going to be titled, No, Trump Is Not “Pushing the Boundaries of Executive Authority.” He’s Attacking the Constitutional Order and Dismembering the Government.
It was going to be about all the news pieces referring to “testing the limits” or “expanding” presidential power, or posing questions about whether this might be some kind of “overreach” or the like. I planned to warn that that characterization is dangerously misleading: What we’re experiencing is an intentional assault on the system, a bald assertion of dictatorial power.
But this week for the first time I felt the tenor of mainstream reporting shifting. Many journalists seem to be realizing that they’re reporting on something they haven’t seen before—that is, unless they’ve reported on teetering democracies elsewhere in the world, in which case it’s all too familiar. Either way, the language of ordinary American presidential muscle-flexing won’t do in describing it.
So I’ll make two other points that arise from this one. First, as I started with:
That's Why Known Insurrectionists Aren't Allowed to Be President
It can befall a democracy that an apparently beneficent man enters electoral politics, rises in influence, gradually or rapidly, and then, upon reaching the highest office, undergoes a stunning transformation, unforeseen except to a few close conspirators, and attacks the foundations of the democratic system, seizing all power to himself.
That’s terribly hard to plan for.
In our case, though, the man who would be dictator tipped his hand at the end of his first term as president by inciting a violent attack on the Capitol, in a failed attempt to overturn the results of the election he lost in 2020. It all happened on live TV and streamed on social media from hundreds of angles.
A well-designed Constitution wouldn’t permit a person like this, a known enemy of democracy, to become president again.
And for all its quirks and flaws in other areas, our Constitution has this situation covered! It unambiguously prohibits people who already tried to overthrow the constitutional system the last time they served in office from serving again.
The Supreme Court majority that Trump created during his first term, though, illegally nullified that rule last year and lifted Trump to a second term as president.
That’s how we got here.
And second,
Trump’s Seizure of Power Is Illegal Regardless of What His Court Says
A pile of legal actions have been filed to prevent or reverse some of Trump’s many illegal executive orders. Some will probably win, some will probably lose, and some may be valuable at least in slowing things up.
The barrage of illegal activity, though, is far beyond the capacity of the lawyers and investigators to keep up with. Even if every legal action filed were to succeed, enormous damage would still be done.
It's also uncertain, at best, that the courts will block even the most egregious of Trump’s violations. The Supreme Court majority he created has already shown itself ready to read the Constitution, as well as statutes, in shamelessly dishonest ways to advance Republican objectives and Trump’s ascendance. How far they will go in approving Trump’s unlawful usurpations is impossible to predict. Individual members of the majority may see the consequences of particular decisions differently from one another, and how they see it may depend on personal and political considerations that we can’t know.
If and when the Court decides to limit Trump’s power, we will learn when and if he will follow those decisions. He is already violating the settled doctrine of many Supreme Court cases. He’s even flouting the recent decision of this very Court on the sale of TikTok.
For us, for now, the most important point is to maintain our independent judgment, particularly on matters that are perfectly clear and involve the foundations of our system. Congress works for us. The president works for us. The Courts work for us, too. We don’t have to accept the lying lies of any of them.
Best,
David