No, Mr. President, you can’t do what you want

There are many reasons to stand against Trump, but the one that should take precedence — because it is foundational for decent governance — is his autocratic assumption that he is above the expectations that apply to us normal humans.

  1. .. Should Trump separate himself completely from his business interests, as presidents had been doing for more than four decades? His implicit message is always: No, I can do what I want.
  2. .. Should he release his income-tax returns so the public can see where conflicts might exist — including whether he will benefit from his own tax proposals?
  3. .. Should he continue former president Barack Obama’s practice of making the White House visitor logs public
  4. .. Should he stop turning the presidency into a permanent and profitable vacation by spending one out of every five minutes at Mar-a-Lago or nearby golf courses
  • .. Should we know the full cost of his gallivanting and how many of the millions of dollars involved are circulating back to his family through the charges Trump’s resorts impose on the government?
  • .. Should we know why it is that, according to The Post’s Greg Miller, Trump “appears increasingly isolated within his own administration” in calling for warmer relations with Russia even as almost everyone else in his government issues “blistering critiques of Moscow”?
  • .. Did Trump express concern about democracy? Nope. He called Erdogan to congratulate him. Why?
    • .. Asked about Turkey in a December 2015 interview with, of all people, Stephen K. Bannon — now his chief strategist who back then hosted a radio show on Breitbart — Trump admitted: “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul.” He also described Erdogan as “a strong leader”

.. If Hillary Clinton had done any one of the things described above, is there any doubt about what Republicans in Congress would be saying and doing?

.. It’s said that Trump always skates away. Not true. Those he ripped off in his Trump University scam stuck with the fight and forced Trump to settle a lawsuit he said (in an untruth typical of his approach) he would never settle. The country’s citizens can prevail, too, if we insist on calling out a self-absorbed huckster who treats us all as easily bamboozled fools.