I have always viewed Donald Trump as a narcissistic blowhard who borders on being a sociopath. He is utterly lacking in empathy towards others and lies so frequently that anything that counters his lies - including objective fact and scientific evidence becomes "fake news" and/or a hoax. With his national approval level now down to 35%, the Mueller investigation seemingly putting intense heat on Trump's co-conspirators, and the Republican controlled Congress proving incapable of passing meaningful legislation - "meaningful," of course meaning relevant to furthering the toxic Trump/Pence agenda - Trump is increasingly lashing out and displaying a desire to discard democratic norms and personally rule as an autocrat. Thankfully, to date even many Trump minions are failing to follow through on Trump's frightening demands. A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the situation. Here are highlights:
Over the last four days President Trump has made a series of statements demanding his Justice Department ‘investigate’ Hillary Clinton and other Democratic enemies. These demands aren’t entirely new. But by their specificity, repetition and speed they represent a new departure in demands for extra-legal action and rule. We should note that Trump is increasingly acting like a dictator or would be strong man. The only difference is that the machinery of government, seemingly up to at least some of his high level appointees, seems to be largely ignoring him. This is much better than the alternative. But it is still a bad, dangerous development.
My own best guess – supported by a good deal of public reporting – is that what we see on the President’s twitter feed is what Freudians might call his id, his most unvarnished and unrestrained desires and demands. In some sense twitter must be acting as a release valve. These sound like demands he’s making of advisors in private settings, only to see a significant number of them refused, argued against or in many cases ignored. This came through explicitly in that Thursday afternoon talk radio interview where the President said he was “frustrated” that he’s not allowed to command the FBI and DOJ to attack his political enemies.
A related moment came when the President reacted to the Manhattan truck attack by telling Laura Ingraham he had “instructed” the Congress that it “must” end the green card lottery program. The day before he said he was “today starting the process Of terminating the diversity lottery program.”
One might be tempted to see this merely as Trump-speak, the kind of nonsensical braggadocio his advisors routinely tell reporters is to be interpreted loosely or disregarded altogether. There’s also a clear dissonance in seeing a President who can’t seem to pass any legislation acting as though his word acts as legislative fiat. Not only can he not command Congress his very presence seems to paralyze it.
The more Trump fails as President, the more he is convinced he requires extra-constitutional powers. More directly, the more he fails he seems to be convinced that his advisors are mistaken when they tell him the ad hoc command regime he used to run his private business won’t work in government. He’s tried their way he says and look what it’s gotten him.
Only days before he went on a tear attacking the whole US legal system as a “laughingstock” and a “joke”.
This morning I noticed this new story about President Trump telling some Native American tribal chiefs he was meeting with to simply break federal law since energy regulations were holding them back. His aides are always quick to say that these broadsides are just Trumpisms, rhetorical flourishes. He doesn’t actually mean break federal law. . . . It’s sort of beside the point. In his plain words he is telling people to break the law. Someone will hear him say those things and – not surprisingly – assume he means it and break the law at the President’s bidding. There’s little doubt this has already happened.
My point in pulling together this flurry of statements is that these demands are accelerating. The wild demands for power are increasing with his frustration in his inability to exercise power as a democratic head of state. They are also, clearly, accelerating as he feels Robert Mueller’s investigation get closer to his family, his inner circle and himself.
This will keep accelerating and may reach a breaking point soon. His legal position and his humiliations in the job are not getting any better.
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