“He who saves his Country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump said yesterday.
Two possible reactions:
1) Continue on the trajectory that got us here in the first place by discarding this as “just Trump being Trump”
2) Grapple in earnest with the fact that Trump asserts dictatorial power as the providential leader tasked with saving the nation.
This is acutely dangerous.
@tzimmer_history It's a weaselly version of Nixon's more straightforward, "If the President does it, it is not illegal." Which might sound like it might make sense, but is effortless to debunk: A President could commit any number of acts that anyone would agree is criminal, such as drunkenly crashing a car into a shop window.
So he obviously didn't mean it that literally. But any effort to interpret it renders it meaningless. It's either wrong or meaningless.
Thomas Zimmer
WesDym