Trump’s behavior is reminiscent of what tin-pot despots do. I know, for I’ve covered the overthrow of more than I can count.
.. What comes through is a persistent effort by Trump to interfere with the legal system. There’s a consistent pattern: Trump’s contempt for the system of laws that, incredibly, he now presides over.
.. The latest revelation is that Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one supplier of American voting software and tried to compromise the computers of more than 100 local voting officials.
.. “Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now,” said Clapper, a former lieutenant general with a long career in intelligence under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. He added: “I am very concerned about the assault on our institutions coming from both an external source — read Russia — and an internal source — the president himself.”
.. Trump has systematically attacked the institutions of American life that he sees as impediments. He denounced judges and the courts. He has attacked journalists as “the enemy of the people,” .. He has publicly savaged Democrats and Republicans who stand up to him.
.. Skimming money meant for kids with cancer? This is cartoonlike. (The family hasn’t responded in detail, although Eric did say that, to him, the critics are “not even people.” He lamented that “morality’s just gone.”)
.. the fundamental question is not just whether the president broke a particular law regarding obstruction of justice, but also whether he is systematically assaulting the rule of law that makes us free.
All the times Trump personally attacked judges — and why his tirades are ‘worse than wrong’
A White House statement Tuesday about a federal district judge’s ruling on Trump’s executive order on “sanctuary cities” did not mince words. It emphasized — more than once — that the judge who just ruled against the administration is not an elected official.
.. Trump is sending a dangerous message in his latest attack on the judiciary: “As the leader of the free world, I should be able to do what I choose. The court shouldn’t be able to get involved.”
Geyh said that attitude shows a lack of understanding of the equal roles of the three branches of government, specifically of the judiciary’s job to serve as a check on the executive branch.
.. “Presidents have disagreed with court rulings all the time. What’s unusual is he’s essentially challenging the legitimacy of the court’s role. And he’s doing that without any reference to applicable law,” Geyh told The Washington Post. “That they are blocking his order is all the evidence he needs that they are exceeding their authority.”
“That’s worse than wrong,” Geyh added. “On some level, that’s dangerous.”
.. Trumps’s attacks on the federal judiciary began even before he took office.
.. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was the target of racially tinged remarks by the Republican presidential nominee last June. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump said that Curiel’s ethnicity should have disqualified him from presiding over fraud lawsuits against the now-defunct Trump University.
He argued that because of his hard-line immigration policies, having a judge of Mexican heritage preside over a lawsuit against him presented an “absolute conflict” of interest.
.. “They ought to look into Judge Curiel because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace. Okay?”
Judges v. Trump: Be Careful What You Wish For
Rudolph Giuliani’s acknowledgment that the travel ban was really a Muslim ban; the failure of the lawyers who wrote the ban to consult national-security officials; and Mr. Trump’s statements in interviews.
.. But the blame lies with Mr. Trump. Having used the pretext of national security to indulge his hostility to a vulnerable group and lacking self-discipline and professionalism, he has lost the confidence of the courts, just as he may have lost the confidence of intelligence agents he compared to Nazis.
.. And if a terrorist attack does happen, as the president suggested in a tweet, he might feel empowered to defy the courts.
How to manage the White House cancer
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller can take to the Sunday shows to assert that “the powers of the president to protect our country . . . will not be questioned” or that “there’s no such thing as judicial supremacy.” But the evidence suggests that ultimately Trump will comply with court rulings even as he denounces them as “disgraceful” and “political.”
.. Trump is different, quantitatively and qualitatively, in the amount, venom and public nature of his attack.
.. When Trump, repeating false claims of an electoral landslide, said his had been “the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan,” NBC News’s Peter Alexander fact-checked him in real time — and Trump, confronted with irrefutable numbers, seemed to crumble: “Well I don’t know. I was given that information. I was given — actually, I’ve seen that information around. But it was a very substantial victory. Do you agree with that?”