The Strangest Thing About Trump’s Approach to Presidential Power
"Steve Schmidt: Sarah Sanders Is The Most 'Prolific Liar' | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC"
Many presidents have pushed the limits of their authority. But not like this.
David A. Graham Jun 7, 2018
President Trump appears at a Make America Great Again rally in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 29, 2018.Leah Millis / Reuters
Donald Trump’s take on executive power is peculiar, but not merely because he’s reaching for more of it.
Expanding presidential prerogatives is practically part of the job description in the modern era. So when Trump’s all-caps flirtation with a self-pardon this week launched a new round of concerns about the president’s use of executive power, many of those concerns were, in part, misdirected.
That’s not to say that Trump’s behavior is normal. In suggesting that he might pardon himself—even as he insisted that he had done nothing to necessitate it—Trump implied that he was not so much above the law as beyond it entirely. And Trump’s unprecedented assertion to self-pardon comes at a time when his legal team is busy making other questionable claims—like the idea that the president can reasonably resist a subpoena, and the assertion, made by Rudy Giuliani, that Trump couldn’t be indicted even if he were to shoot former FBI Director James Comey.
Critics see this, rightly, as part of a broad rhetorical effort to undermine rule of law. “We overthrew control by a monarchy, and the Constitution signals in multiple places that the president is subject to law,” Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University, told Charlie Savage.
But what’s most interesting is the way the president is choosing to flex his muscle compared with his predecessors. Past presidents have frequently tested the limits of their powers—and of the Constitution—on national security, war powers, and push-pull interactions with the legislature.But Trump seems to be pushing against the limits of his presidential power almost entirely to protect himself. “He certainly uses presidential power for personal purposes,” says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton. “That’s the place he uses it more aggressively—to protect himself, to protect his inner circle. That’s clearly where he’s most assertive.”
By even publicly discussing a self-pardon, Trump is breaking new ground. Richard Nixon apparently considered the idea late in the Watergate scandal, but the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concluded he could not do so, and he did not try. Instead, he resigned, and his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. Yet unless and until Trump actually tries to pardon himself, or refuses a subpoena, or shoots a former official and tries to resist arrest, the actual limits of executive power will remain unknown.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
