A lot of people in the United States hoped it would come to this. Many more feared that it would happen. I’m with the latter group.
Last night, April 13, 2020, perhaps a second “date which shall live in infamy”, President Donald Trump implied that he was King of the United States.
At a press conference in which the President aired grievances, insulted reporters, and ran a tacky campaign video, he also spoke out strongly about his ability to “open up the U.S. economy” whenever he sees fit.
When reporters questioned him about his authority to overrule state Governors who imposed stay-at-home restrictions to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump said, “The President of the United States calls the shots…They can’t do anything without the approval of the President of the United States.”
The President added that there were “numerous provisions” in the Constitution that give him that power…but he didn’t name any. Besides, he said, “When somebody’s the President of the United States, the authority is total.”
Gee, that assertion would certainly surprise the Founding Fathers, who gave the Chief Executive no such powers.
Virtually every legal scholar of merit agrees that the President has the powers articulated in Article II of the Constitution, but the Congress, the judiciary, and the states have many powers, as articulated in the rest of the original Constitution and the 10th Amendment.
(We can probably expect, any day now, for the President’s errand boy, Attorney General William Barr, to come up with a novel Constitutional opinion that the President can do anything he damn well wants to.)
Under the 10th Amendment, the states are given the authority to promote public health and welfare. And, in this Covid-19 pandemic, most of them have used that authority and their police powers to impose and enforce stay-at-home restrictions. They imposed them and they will decide when to un-impose them.
Question: If the Federal government (i.e. the Trump Administration) had enjoyed those powers, why didn’t they use them back in February or March?
Answer: It fell to the States to do the political heavy lifting, at a time when President Trump was downplaying the potential severity of the pandemic. The State Governors took the heat, and are still taking it, while the Trump Administration is now taking bows for the “flattening of the curve”.
What’s happened lately is a very perverse interpretation of the role of the President of the United States. Thirty day ago, when questioned about the Administration’s slow response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the President said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Last night, when questioned about his intent to re-open the American economy, he asserted that his “authority is total”
That is a neat trick: to have total authority but bear no responsibility. I’m sure every President would like that…particularly at election time.
It’s a wet dream that is only accorded kings and dictators, not heads of democracies. Of course, our President has almost daily expressed his disdain for the American model of government, so his startling assertions in Monday’s news conference were probably a Freudian slip.
By the way, Trump’s bold assertion of “total authority” was immediately challenged by several Governors, and the very next morning the President announced that he will be “working with the Governors” on the relaxation of the stay-at-home restrictions.
No shit.
The President’s clear goal is to get the wounded economy back into gear quickly, even if public health might suffer. He’s been furiously cobbling together a new task force of supposed geniuses to figure out how he might justify such an action, despite thousands of Americans dying each day from the pandemic.
Trump is having some difficulty finding legitimate “superstar” candidates for this task force. Thus far, he’s resorted to naming a bunch of folks who already work for him in the Administration (Cabinet members, White House lapdogs, and some social climbers in the Federal bureaucracy).
The President’s new “Reopening” Task Force will, according to Trump, include, “Not only the greatest minds, but the greatest minds in numerous different businesses, including the business of politics and reason.” For example, he said, “Very, very great doctors.”
Uh, how about some Governors, Mr. President?
There’s an interesting thing about this Presidency that often gets overlooked:
When Donald Trump was a candidate, he was asked about who he would bring into his Administration to help him govern. Candidate Trump promised that he “would only hire the best and most serious people”. Presumably, that is exactly what he did when he became President. In fact, in January 2017, when he took office, he claimed that his Cabinet “had the highest IQ of any cabinet in history”.
That’s’ encouraging, isn’t it? It’s nice to have smart people advising the President: I’m sure George Washington appreciated having Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams in his cabinet.
However, where are these smart people now that we (and the Administration) need them?
Well, hardly any of the people that incoming President Trump brought with him still work for the Federal government. Of the 100 top officials in the Administration in January 2017, four of them (including 3 of the original Cabinet members) still hold their jobs, the others having been fired or resigned.
So much for the “best and most serious people”!
Of course, that begs the question: “Who are these not-so-best and less-serious people that currently surround President Trump?”
The answer to that question is pretty obvious: they are people who this President can intimidate and who’s loyalty to him outweighs their public service responsibility.
(Example: Today, Kellyanne Conway, the President’s senior campaign spokesperson, defended Trump’s threat to defund the World Health Organization, blamed by the President for not giving him enough warning about the impending pandemic.
She said, “Look, this was not Covid-1…it was Covid-19. The WHO had 18 opportunities to warn people that it was coming.” That sounds about right to a moron, which was Conway’s audience on Fox News. Except, that, Covid-19 was given its name because that coronavirus (Covid) was discovered in 2019. Once again, we have the “not-so-best and less-serious” people assisting the President of the United States. You get what you pay for.)
A good example of the continuing tragi-comedy was yesterday’s Presidential press conference. One day before, the Administration’s superstar pandemic briefer, Dr. Anthony Fauci, when asked if an earlier and more robust pandemic effort by the Administration would have saved lives, answered in the affirmative. That evening the President re-Tweeted a comment from one of his fans which included the hashtag “Fire Fauci”.
And, the next day, Dr. Fauci trooped to the podium under the President’s withering gaze and recanted his comments. Then, the President said that he had no plans to fire Fauci.
As is demonstrated every day on television, appointed officials in the Trump Administration are expected to fawn over “the Emperor’s new clothes” and refrain from making any factual statements whatsoever while the President continues to lie about everything and blame others for his failures.
I’m not expecting much serious contemplation from the proposed “Re-Opening” task force. After all, the members, whoever they turn out to be, know from the get-go what the President wants; their job is to reverse-engineer his decision to make it sound logical and prudent.
Will Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Warren Buffett serve on this task force? Unlikely, because they will not want to be tarred and feathered when a second wave of Covid-19 envelops the country and causes more misery.
Or, which is more likely, our President will make some repulsive comments about a politician, a reporter, a foreign head of state, or an American citizen that they can’t stomach and they’ll be ashamed that they’re “working for him”.
Also likely: Trump will call-out one of his new task force members as “disloyal” when they buck the foregone conclusion of the fact-finding groupl
That latter reason is why so many of the “best and most serious people” no longer work for President Donald Trump.
And, of course, no genius American businessman would want to be part of a supposed “think tank” where thinking is not allowed and the outcome is known before the folks take their seats around the conference room.
It is quite apparent that the Prez wants this “re-opening” to happen yesterday. One wonders, “Why the rush? People are still dying in droves.”
Could the answer be that there is some personal reason that The King is hiding?
I have a theory as to why to President is SO ANXIOUS to re-open quarantined states:
His normal routine for the past three years has been to hold “rallies” in Trump-friendly communities, where he can exaggerate his accomplishments and blame failures on others. He then will play a few rounds of golf at Trump resort hotels, and spend the rest of his “work week” watching Fox News, being interviewed by Fox News, and Tweeting outrageous things to his millions of fellow Twitter imbeciles.
With stay-at-home restrictions in most States, Trump is not able to campaign via his staged rallies. He also can’t golf.
He’s frustrated and he feels powerless.
Trump’s outlet for his frustration has been the daily Presidential news conference regarding the pandemic. Those have substituted for the rallies, in his mind. Except for the fact that, sometimes, reporters will challenge the lies that he is telling, and this will result in days of retractions, animosity towards the media, and blame-casting on subordinates. All of this is embarrassing to the Prez, who looked toward these PR events to boost his re-election prospects.
He desperately wants to resume his normal routine, including outdoor rallies and golf. They make him feel good.
Thus, we have the President’s hard-to-comprehend, out-of-control urge to re-open the country and get back to normal…while a pandemic is raging.
The King’s gut is telling him, “Great idea, Your Majesty!”
The President is running out of ideas how he can spin the Administration’s performance from bad to good. Yesterday saw the worst daily death toll from Covid-19…some 2,300 poor souls.
So, it appears that some genius in the King’s entourage suggested that Trump sign the stimulus checks going out to in-need folks from the Treasury. This is exactly the kind of thinking that excites Donald Trump, getting credit for things he didn’t personally accomplish.
Actually, Congress has the role under the Constitution to fund programs such as this stimulus, and it did so in this case. The President merely signed the legislation.
Interestingly, it is the first time this grandstanding has been done in the history of the United States. In fact, there has been a long-standing policy in the Treasury Department that all government checks going out to citizens/voters bear the signature of a Treasury bureaucratic functionary, to keep partisanship out of the equation.
This is what we’ve come to expect from narcissist Donald Trump, who is desperately trying to wring some sort of success out of this national tragedy.
“Sorry to hear about your grandparents. Here’s $1,200 from Uncle Donald.”
There used to be a term-for this kind of political stunt: vote buying.
