"This guy thinks he's CEO of America and it's a family-owned company. He doesn't have to answer to anybody."
That's Maine Sen. Angus King on Donald Trump during an interview on CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday. And, man, did the Mainer nail it.
Trump runs his White House -- and the broader government -- much in the same way he ran his eponymous company. He has surrounded himself with a small inner circle filled with a combination of family members and people willing to tell him he is always right. He demands total loyalty from those who work for him and, as is the case with the traditionally independent Justice Department, fumes when they refuse to follow his orders to a "T." He purposely -- and publicly -- contradicts people within his own administration as a way to assert his dominance and keep them on their toes.
Put another way: All you need to know about how Donald Trump views the presidency you can learn by watching a single episode of "The Apprentice."
What has become abundantly clear in Trump's two-plus years on the job is that Washington and the presidency isn't changing him. In fact, it's the other way around. (Remember those golden days when the political world debated whether Trump would act more "presidential" once in office??)
Trump, more so than any other modern president, has reshaped the norms governing what a president can -- and should -- do with the power conveyed by the office. He has, among other things, sought to discredit the idea of an independent media, devalued the idea of truth, threatened to close the US's southern border, said that there was blame on both sides for white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, attacked a cable TV host for her alleged facelift and on and on and on.
He's also repeatedly expressed disdain for the role of the legislative and judicial branches in the system of checks and balances. And expressed his admiration for the power exerted by authoritarian dictators around the world. Through it all, Trump has never understood -- or cared to understand -- why what he says (and wants) doesn't just happen.
The Point: Whether Trump wins a second term in 2020 or not, his legacy will be the way in which he changed how people think about a) who should be president and b) how a president should act in office. Trump acts as though he has unlimited power to do whatever he wants in office -- and attacks those who question that view. He might be the first to see the office that way, but he has ensured he won't be the last.
-- Chris | |
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