Let’s be clear up front: Donald Trump doesn’t care one iota about the Constitution.
I wrote about it for Rolling Stone before the 2016 election, laying out how he had already demonstrated during his first real campaign that he didn’t believe “core principles and values” of the nation’s founding document. , But I think what we’ve seen in his first week-plus in office this time around is that he is completely apathetic about it, giving it no thought whatsoever. And that’s a scary thing to say about a president.
What we’ve seen in this short period of time is an unprecedented grab of power in almost every area of law:
Despite the Constitution and federal statute requiring birthright citizenship — people born on American soil are American citizens even if their parents are not — the Trump Administration issued an executive order declaring that it will end on February 19. The order has been met with multiple legal challenges, leading a federal judge to temporarily block it. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, wrote in his decision that the order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Despite the Constitution and federal statute prohibiting the president from refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for a particular purpose, the Trump administration issued an order doing just that, ostensibly so that federal agencies can investigate whether these programs are imbued with, among other things, “DEI” and “woke gender ideology.” This order, too, has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
Despite Congress putting a firm date on the start of the ban on TikTok, Trump said he was giving the company 75 additional days to comply, a power that finds no basis in the statute. Despite the Constitution and federal statute prohibiting the president from firing people in offices such as the Inspector General office, Trump has fired people in those roles. Despite federal courts having previously declared that a ban on trans people in the military is unconstitutional sex discrimination, Trump reinstated that policy.
President Trump has said that he wants to withhold federal funds from California in the wake of the devastating wildfires until California complies with Trump’s wishes about voter ID, despite the Constitution requiring that conditions on federal funds be connected to the purpose of the funds and Congress not placing any condition on federal disaster relief.
And despite the Constitution being crystal clear that Trump cannot run for a third term as president, he has hinted repeatedly, including this week, that he isn’t sure whether he can’t actually run again.
The list can go on and on, but two points are entirely clear here.
First, Donald Trump does not care about specific provisions of the Constitution that might constrain him. Two terms as president under the 22nd Amendment? Who cares! Congress having the power of the purse under Article I? Who cares! The president enforcing the law, not making law under Article II? Who cares!
Second, the basic idea of separation of powers is irrelevant to Trump. Congress having its lane and the president having his lane is anathema to everything Donald Trump learned spending most of his life as the owner of a private company which had a board of directors composed of his close family and friends. He is trying to do as president what he did as head of the Trump Organization: whatever he wants. Separation of powers? What’s that!
For a party that mythologizes the constitutional framers, Republicans are awfully silent about Trump’s ignoring this basic principle of government that has been with us since the American Revolution. The framers revolted from King George III and wrote the Constitution because the King claimed to have all power to do whatever he wants. The framers established three branches of government so that the president did not have control over making and applying the law, just enforcing it. The framers embedded federalism in the Constitution so that the president (and others in the federal government) couldn’t control all aspects of American life, just those that are national in scope. The framers, in short, set up the Constitution so that we would not have a king here in America. This is basic middle school civics.
But Trump doesn’t care. He will try to do whatever he wants, no matter the Constitution. And the lack of pushback from the Republicans (and many Democrats) indicates that they also care little about the Constitution.
All they really seem to care about is power and pleasing their monarch, King Donald J. Trump.
From Rolling Stone US
