Trump's strategy to declare himself above the law
By Paul Waldman
Opinion writer
April 23 at 12:40 PM
If you’re the president, checks and balances are a real hassle. For all the power you have, the courts can tell you that what you’ve done is unconstitutional, and Congress can go mucking around in your business with investigations and subpoenas.
Every president chafes at the constraints on their authority. But none has felt the same sense of aggrievement that Donald Trump does.
As the president looks ahead to the 2020 election, he sees himself bedeviled. House Democrats might not impeach him, but even if they don’t they’ll be aggressively investigating him and his administration. While previous presidents might have fought a subpoena here or there while arguing that the investigations were going overboard, Trump believes it is only proper that he be above the law.
So his White House has formulated a strategy that goes like this: Trump will insist that any attempt to hold him accountable for anything is illegitimate. The administration will simply refuse to comply with the law in order to protect him. It will count on the Supreme Court, now with a friendly 5-to-4 conservative majority, to validate his position. And even if the court doesn’t always do so, he can still win simply by running out the clock past next November ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/23/trumps-strategy-declare-himself-above-law-escape-accountability/?utm_term=.046faf66d392
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