King Trump

“Apres moi le deluge.”

– – Attributed to French King Louis XIV

The expression means “after me, the deluge.”  It can be understood in a number of ways, including that after the demise of the king, there would be a disaster, or that he simply did not care what happened after he was gone.  In some contexts, it has also come to mean that the king is the state, and without the king, the state ceases to exist.

Whatever one’s translation, it can easily be attributed in current times to our president.  In many of his statements, he clearly sees himself as the state.  Anything that goes against his wishes is a “disaster” or “an attack on our nation” or “treason.”  Numerous examples abound.

“And it’s a disgrace. It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”

— Donald J. Trump on 9 April 2018 following the FBI executing a lawful search warrant on the offices and home of his attorney Mr. Michael Cohen

“Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

— Donald J. Trump on 24 July 2018

“I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.  Without his kind of thinking (as he pointed to his head) you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”

— Donald J. Trump on 23 August 2018 on “Fox and Friends”

There are many many more examples, too many to list here, where Mr. Trump equates his well-being to the state of the nation.  He apparently thinks he is the nation.  But perhaps the best example is still ongoing, starting with last week’s anonymous New York Times opinion piece on Mr. Trump’s fitness for office written by a “senior official” in the administration.  It is worth reviewing the entire impact and implications of the piece, but first it is interesting to consider Mr. Trump’s reaction to it.  Among other things, the writer made it clear in his/her opinion that Mr. Trump exhibits “erratic behavior,” exhibits fundamental “amorality,” and his leadership style is “impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective.”  Most importantly, the writer states that early on in his administration there was serious talk of invoking the 25th Amendment that provides the process for removing an unfit president from office.

Wow.  Are we dealing with Captain Queeg and the Caine Mutiny?  Will someone soon be ladling out strawberries to make sure they are all there?

More on all of that momentarily, but here is Mr. Trump’s reaction to it, coming on the heels of early reviews of Bob Woodward’s book on his presidency called “Fear” which will be released to the public tomorrow.  He called upon the Department of Justice to initiate an investigation into who wrote it and into the New York Times to find out why they published it.  His one word response to the events, over Twitter of course, was “TREASON.”  (The all caps are his.)  Once again, Mr. Trump loosely throws around very profound and serious accusations whenever anyone criticizes him.  He equates himself to the state.  Remember his insistence on loyalty to him, as a person, rather than to the Constitution and the rule of law.  Once again he is threatening to use the Justice Department and FBI for his own personal purposes.

Dangerous.

The New York Times opinion piece met with mixed reactions depending on who responded.  His senior political appointees duly swore that it wasn’t them.  Of course.  The original Deep Throat in the 1970’s swore for roughly thirty years that it wasn’t him.  Until it was.

More substantively, what is the import of the piece?  I think it naive and unthinking to pass it off as just another political hack job from someone who doesn’t like the president.  Just business as usual.  Except that it isn’t.  The increasing amount of evidence building around the president since his inauguration is that he is temperamentally, intellectually, and psychologically unfit to be the president of these United States.  Remember Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) saying in the summer of 2017 that the White House is being run like “adult day care.”  Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb) said when asked about the piece “It’s just so similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the White House, you know, three times a week. So it’s really troubling, and yet in a way, not surprising.”

Many other politicians, pundits, analysts and journalists relay that have observed the same unsettling behavior on the part of Mr. Trump for two years.  They find nothing surprising in the situation as described in the op-ed or as reported to be in Mr. Woodward’s forthcoming book.  It’s business as usual.

Yikes!

If everyone in the know understands that the president is not fit for office, why are they not stepping up and doing something about it?  Consider this.  In the piece the senior administration official says this:

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.”

This is serious business.  If they felt that strongly, then why has no one gone to Congress (that we know of, it is always possible they did and the Republican controlled Congress chose not to act) or to the American public and expressed their obvious concerns over his ability to function as president.  It is their duty.  If it is that bad, that his own political appointees seriously considered it, then we are in big trouble.  And no one is doing anything about it.

That isn’t to say that there should be a cavalier attitude about deposing a duly elected president.  This is serious business.  But that’s the point.  I assume that a senior official does not take invoking the 25th Amendment lightly, and if they do they should be removed. To even think about it, much less discuss it, hints at dire circumstances.  The writer is failing in his/her duty to the Constitution to not act on it.

One may also question the fidelity to the Constitution of the writer, and if the piece is correct, other members of the administration, by their tactics to keep the president in line.  The author writes of “a two-track presidency.”  This in and of itself is dangerous.  While officials inside and outside the administration may disagree with a decision, their duty is to execute the orders of the President of the United States.  We cannot function with a “two-track presidency.”  Such action runs counter to the principles of our nation.  When confronted with a profoundly troubling order, the officials surrounding the president have three choices.  They can talk him out of it, resign and express their disagreement, or carry it out to the best of their ability.  Period.

The story told in the op-ed and seemingly in Mr. Woodward’s book, coupled with long-standing journalist and news reports, paints a very scary picture of a president running amok.  Personally.  These concerns are separate and distinct from political agreements or disagreements on his policy.  Think of this, the senior national security cabinet officials and intelligence officials still do not know what Mr. Trump discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  That is wrong and extremely troubling.

Equally troubling is that people within the administration take it upon themselves to decide which policies to implement and which ones to ignore.  That isn’t how it works.

Finally there is Mr. Trump’s instinct to take everything personally and to invoke his powers to use the government for his own purposes.  The list is nearly endless.  In this case, it is a challenge to the fundamentals of our nation’s laws to call an op-ed piece “treason” and to imply (a president’s wishes are normally taken as commands) that the Department of Justice and the FBI should investigate an individual exercising their First Amendment rights.  Further to imply that they should investigate the New York Times and force them to turn over the name of the author should make us all extremely concerned.  No laws were broken in writing and publishing the piece.  None.  There is no national security or classified information in the piece.

One can argue that the anonymous source should have put their name on it.  I agree.  That is not against the law, however, and is significantly different from an investigation for treason.

I do not know what it will take for the Republican controlled Congress to exercise their Constitutional duties of oversight of this president.  One person opined that only “millions” marching in the street will get them to do their duty.  The elections in November will have a huge impact on the nation.  If the Republicans win and continue to ignore their duty, Mr. Trump will be emboldened and push the limits of his power even further.  If the Democrats win we will have endless hearings and investigations into Mr. Trump’s activities to the extent that it is possible that no other legislative business will get done.  For the future of our nation, I will take the latter — or elected Republicans willing to take on the president.

My theory is that the current Republican leadership in the House and Senate have decided to ride Mr. Trump as far as they can — especially in the appointment of federal judges that is taking place at an unprecedented rate, not to mention the Supreme Court.  The face of the judiciary has changed for years, perhaps decades to come.  The Congress, especially through Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), is going to continue to go full-bore on approving judges, riding Mr. Trump, until he collapses, at which point they will abandon him.  His collapse will happen either through a Democrat blue wave in November or through Mr. Trump’s removal by resignation or impeachment.

In all, it is a troubling picture where we all need to pay attention.  Risking hyperbole and hoping I do not sound shrill, nothing less than our future is at stake.