Don’t be fooled by Trump’s dictatorship jokes

Lest anyone think that Donald Trump is the only president to muse about the benefits of a dictatorship recall that the previous Republican president George W Bush did as well Following a meeting with congressional leaders days after the Supreme Court essentially declared him the winner of the presidential voting Bush revealed I stated them that there are going to be selected times where we don t agree with each other but that s OK If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier just so long as I m the dictator Considering the lengthy post-election saga that put him in the White House it was an odd thing to say But Dubya had a habit of saying the quiet part out loud just as Trump does Republicans like that in their presidents But then the GOP also seems to like when a president abuses his power as Richard Nixon Ronald Reagan George H W Bush George W Bush and Trump all have done It s been a party tradition for the last years But then the GOP also seems to like when a president abuses his power as Richard Nixon Ronald Reagan George H W Bush George W Bush and Trump all have done It s been a party tradition for the last years Bush pushed the limits of presidential authority countless times from leading and lying the country into war to legalizing torture Both the elder Bush and Reagan were implicated in the Iran-Contra shame which was a direct usurpation of congressional authority We don t even have to mention Nixon He wrote the book on GOP embarrassment During the Reagan administration the conservative legal intelligentsia promoted their belief in the unitary executive theory which holds that under the vesting clause of Article II Section of the Constitution the president has total control over all administrators in the executive branch One of the administration s staffers who pushed this theory of presidential supremacy was a young lawyer named John Roberts and in the Roberts Court affirmed that interpretation in a - decision Considering this history it should not surprise us that we would eventually get a GOP president who would seize the moment Related Fed governor s firing shows that Trump is beyond all restraint In Trump declared I have an Article II where I have the right to do whatever I want as president Back then selected of the unitary executive proponents were a bit disturbed Even John Yoo the notorious lawyer for the Bush administration who wrote the legal opinion for the Justice Department that authorized torture concluded that Trump was acting beyond the scope of his power In his first term Trump pushed the boundaries But he was restrained by experienced members of his administration who respected the Constitution and after the first two years a Democratic Congress that impeached him for abuse of power when he blocked congressionally-appropriated military aid unless Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy helped him discredit Joe Biden Trump s behavior after his loss in the electoral contest included plenty of examples of abuse of power not the least of which was his plot to overturn it He was impeached again after the fact one week before left office But Senate Republicans led then by that paragon of principle Kentucky Sen Mitch McConnell lost their nerve and failed to convict Trump A conviction would have deprived him of the ability to run for president again in retrospect it was inevitable that he would do so Two years later as his campaign for the GOP nomination was revving up in earnest the New York Times communicated Donald J Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of administration if voters return him to the White House in reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands Much of what was revealed in that story was later formalized in Project the Heritage Foundation initiative that Trump insisted he knew nothing about which we now see as the unitary executive theory on steroids It has all come to pass in record time The president is firing people left and right his Justice Department is examining his political rivals and there are arcane legal arguments over whether he has the right to close departments in the executive branch unilaterally This is all a huge departure from governing body norms and the mechanics might seem confusing to people who are going about their everyday lives and only casually follow the news coming out of Washington D C In fact Trump and his MAGA acolytes are counting on such disorientation which creates a smokescreen for the president s misuse and abuse of power He has taken his right to do anything I want to previously unimagined lengths and the Republican establishment particularly congressional and state leaders are aiding and abetting his attacks Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Trump s decision to unleash masked unidentifiable Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on America s streets is a living nightmare for millions of people They are building facilities across the country that can only be described as internment camps They are deporting people to foreign gulags and countries with which they have no connection family money or encouragement Now Trump is in the process of taking over Washington federalizing the city s police force and deploying National Guard troops by ginning up a crime crisis that doesn t exist and he has admitted doing so for political reasons I think crime is going to be the big thing in the midterms he commented on Tuesday He s threatening to expand his operation to Baltimore Chicago and New York During the presidential campaign Democrats often accused Trump of having fascist ambitions When required he commented he required to be a dictator for just his first day in office But over the past week he has repeatedly stated that Americans like the idea of a dictator Yes he usually adds that he isn t one but he insists it s something numerous people would patronage In comments he just now made at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts he announced that instead of calling him a dictator they should say we re going to join him and make Washington safe This week he brought it up again several times On Monday during a meeting at the White House he complained They say We don t need him freedom freedom He s a dictator He s a dictator A lot of people are saying Maybe we like a dictator He made a similar comment the next day The line is that I m a dictator but I stop crime So a lot of people say You know if that s the occurrence I d rather have a dictator He added later Majority people say If you call him a dictator if he stops crime he can be whatever he wants I m not a dictator by the way We need your help to stay independent Subscribe in the modern day to encouragement Salon s progressive journalism But since he believes he has unlimited power to do anything he chooses it s pretty clear that he is open to entertaining the notion As he stated on Tuesday during a Cabinet Meeting I have the right to do anything I want to do I m the president of the United States If I think our country is in danger and it is in danger in these cities I can do it If those aren t the words of a would-be dictator I don t know what would be Trump is raising the prospect of a dictatorship over and over again to normalize it to make it something from which the American people will no longer recoil and that it s accepted and even supported by a great number of Americans Will it work CNN has broadcasted that Trump s followers are increasingly in favor of dictatorship as long as he is the dictator The question is whether the rest of the country will be so sanguine In the meantime even if he s not quite embracing the term itself the president is behaving like a dictator And so far he s getting away with it Trump is crude and ignorant about virtually everything but on certain instinctive level he understands that the Republican Party has been laying the groundwork for this since Nixon first tested the waters back in the early s Now Trump senses an opening and he is going for it Read more about this topic Trump s assault on the Smithsonian is a crime against history MAGA knows DC takeover isn t about crime which is why they love it We need a new theory of democracy because this version has failed The post Don t be fooled by Trump s dictatorship jokes appeared first on Salon com