An All-Out Assault on the Rule of Law
Trump won’t let laws get in the way of his power.
We’re all for patriotism here, but let’s do a little experiment with a section of Trump’s second inaugural address yesterday:
Italy will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. . . .
The ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation, and right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation.
See how different it sounds if you just change the name of the country? Trump really can’t avoid sounding like Cheeto Benito.
Happy Tuesday.
Trump’s Oath Isn’t Worth a Damn
by William Kristol
Shortly after noon yesterday, Donald Trump took the oath of office. He swore that he would “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States” and would, to the best of his ability, “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
He spent the rest of the day violating that oath.
The blizzard of executive orders and pronouncements that Trump issued yesterday featured—almost boasted of—his disdain for legality and contempt for constitutionality. One might say that Trump’s embrace of illegality and unconstitutionality was a feature, not a bug, of Day One of his presidency. From abrogating the law governing TikTok to trying to end birthright citizenship—not to mention a host of other actions, especially but not only concerning immigration—Trump made clear that a lawless presidency is at the core of his vision for his second term.
Yet in a way the most radical statement of lawlessness was an act for which Trump does have constitutional authority: the pardon, or in a few cases commutation, of all the criminals and defendants involved in the January 6th assault on the Capitol. The pardons included the most violent and unrepentant of the convicts, and the leaders of dangerous extremist groups.
The pardon power has long been understood to be virtually absolute. So Trump acted, if disgracefully, within his legal powers.
But in a deeper sense, the pardons of the January 6th defendants, who had sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and overturn the election result, were a fundamental assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. And not only because it was a retrospective legitimation of that effort four years ago. But because the pardons are an invitation to further assaults, and not just four years from now but throughout the next four years, against the rule of law, and against both civilians and law enforcement officials who seek to uphold the rule of law. It is the empowerment of pro-Trump vigilantes by offering the promise of pardons if the legal system gets in the way.
Even Vice President JD Vance understands that. That’s why he said Sunday that “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” It’s obvious both because such pardons are morally wrong in terms of what these individuals did, but also because they are so fundamentally subversive of the rule of law going forward.
Yet Vance’s boss released hundreds of such violent offenders yesterday, including the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, convicted by juries of seditious conspiracy.
Some members of Congress—a coequal brand of the federal government—denounced the pardons, though I’m unaware of any Republicans who have done so. Still, it would seem worthwhile for House and Senate Democrats to introduce resolutions condemning Trump’s pardons. Yes, the Republican majorities in those bodies could prevent them from coming to a vote. But it would be proper to force them to do that, to force Republicans to choose whether they are willing to join Trump and go on the record as pro-insurrection.
But the most effective thing that can be done in the short term would be for the Senate to deny Kash Patel, a leading advocate for pardoning all the January 6th criminals, the position of FBI director. As it happens, Patel has also promoted the lie that the FBI is partly responsible for January 6th, a position Trump repeated yesterday. Here too, Democrats alone can’t block Patel. But they can make clear that Republican senators who vote to confirm him are also voting for the insurrectionists. Perhaps in the process a few of these Republicans will balk at making such a statement, and vote to defeat Patel.
Voting for non-binding resolutions and against Patel are unsatisfactory responses to the crisis we face. But they would be a start.
And we should not minimize Trump’s ambitions.
On Sunday, Trump complained about the “rigged” election of 2020, and said, “We’re not gonna let that happen again.”
What did Trump mean by this? One could understand him to mean merely that the federal government under his direction isn’t going to let an election be rigged again. But we know, from accounts of private conversations Trump had after the 2020 election, that Trump understands that the election wasn’t in fact rigged. So what Trump seems to have meant is far more radical: That he does not intend to allow a defeat of himself or his designated successor to happen again.
Trump will spend the next four years trying to rig the playing field so that he or his successor can’t lose. He placed the Big Tech / media plutocrats in the front row at the inauguration. They’re key to such an effort, as is clear from the history of authoritarian takeovers elsewhere.
It’s become fashionable in some circles to explain that we who have opposed Trump can’t just oppose Trump, can’t just resist Trump, can’t just seek to check Trump, can’t just work to defeat Trumpism.
The truth is closer to the opposite. Opposing, resisting, and checking Trump, and ultimately defeating Trumpism, are the prerequisites to preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States.
QUICK HITS
In case you missed everything on the homepage yesterday, here’s a quick tour:
Sen. Chris Coons makes Trump an offer: Work with Democrats on policies that might actually help the country, or pursue trade wars and mass deportations—but not both.
Today, average prices are 22.5 percent higher than they were before the pandemic. Stabilizing the costs Americans pay ought to be Washington’s number-one priority this year. If you have good ideas about how we can do this, I want to work with you on them. After all, the idea that food, clothing, and housing should be affordable isn’t a Democratic idea or a Republican one. Fight for smart ways to tackle inflation, and we’ll all work to make that happen.
If you want to lower costs for Americans, however, you’re not going to do it with some of the ideas you ran on.
Jill Lawrence sees the big picture: There’s not one story about TikTok and Chinese influence over Americans posing a threat to national security and another story about tech billionaires taking over our politics. It’s one story—they’re part of the same thing. Be alarmed:
Trump shadow president and X owner Elon Musk has already managed to kill a policy that would have damaged his Tesla investments in China. Now he’s the leader of a fake government efficiency “department” that will no doubt spare his SpaceX contracts from any proposed cuts. . . .
Equally disturbing, if not more so, is Trump’s strange combination of hostility to China (threats to slap tariffs on up to 60 percent of its exports to America) and apparent eagerness for joint U.S.-China ownership of TikTok. . . .
China, which sat out the 2020 election, worked to help Trump last year using disinformation, propaganda, and fake social accounts. Now it’s moving into disruption of state and local election races, CNBC reports. This is in addition to Chinese companies and individuals staging massive hacks of phone records and government agencies in the last few years.
And also check out her article summing up Trump’s speech and the events of the day.
Mona Charen decries the false prophets of the Orange God-King at the inauguration yesterday:
Preachers are a fixture at presidential inaugurations, but until now they’ve confined their words to asking the Almighty to bless the new president and his family and to guide the nation to goodness and mercy. The prophets were popular choices. Not this time. Graham used the opportunity not to praise God but to worship Donald Trump. Regarding the inauguration, Graham exulted “Look what the Lord has done!” . . .
The Catholic priest who delivered closing remarks elevated the re-elected president to even greater heights, seeming to sanctify his dead parents and thanking God for having created them so that they could bless the world with Donald.Trump has never been a religious man, as he has acknowledged many times. He worships himself so devoutly that there was never much room for God.
Giselle Donnelly parses Trump’s second inaugural address for its national security ideas—and find the most important ones omitted:
Much of Trump’s speech was empty bombast. . . . He stressed that military success should be measured “not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and . . . the wars we never get into”—yet he made no mention of the war in Ukraine, which he had promised to end before he even became president again.
Also missing: any explanation of how the Pax Trumpiana he boasted of—American power “will stop all wars” and make the world less “angry, violent, and totally unpredictable”—would be accomplished.
Yet as full of chest-pounding bluster as Trump was, perhaps most notable about the address were some of the other things he didn’t say, namely, “Greenland” and “Canada.” . . .
Who knows what the explanation for these omissions is? It may just be that Trump didn’t read the full script. Or it may be that he remains a bully who will back down when stoutly opposed.
Adrian Carrasquillo has a scoop: The ACLU is suing the Trump administration to stop the executive order that purports to end birthright citizenship.
The battle lines over birthright citizenship began coming into focus weeks, if not months, ago, as Trump made clear his desire to end the practice, which he and other nativists blame for attracting undocumented immigrants across the border. But they came rapidly to a head with Trump’s inauguration on Monday, foreshadowing what seems likely to be a tense and litigious first few months of the second Trump administration. . . .
Legal scholars have cast serious doubt on Trump’s ability to declare an established constitutional principle null and void. And, for that reason, lawsuits were anticipated. How soon the ACLU will move is not entirely clear. But the group’s expected legal challenge was confirmed by three senior immigration leaders aware of the planned suit who said the plan has been in the works from before Trump taking office. The ACLU did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Bulwark.
Cheap Shots
The worst is yet to come folks. We're not even at the parts where Trump is dealing with any kind of crisis yet.
As bad as I knew yesterday would be, somehow having it all actually happen was worse. A man who committed sedition against the United States of America took the oath of office (notably not with his hand on the Bible, probably so he didn’t burst into flames) to protect and defend the very nation he attempted to betray 4 years ago. It’s too much.
I really hope congressional and senate Dems read this today Bill and follow your advice. Yesterday gave us some easy lay ups, so it would be nice to use them.