Presidents often lose control over their agenda, or the policy process, or pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they even lose control of their party. But Donald Trump seems to have lost control over the one thing every person, and especially those with immense power, should always maintain control over: himself. Yesterday the president called for the arrest and execution of elected American officials for the crime—as he sees it—of fidelity to the Constitution.
It would be easy merely to note, yet again, that the president is a depraved man and a menace to the American system of government. As remarkable as it is to say it, however, the outbursts of this past week are different, and were likely triggered by Trump’s panic over the release of files about his former friend, the dead sex offender Jeffery Epstein. No one should treat this new phase in the president’s aggression against democracy as just another episode in the Trump reality show.
A group of Democratic legislators—all of them either military veterans or former national-security officials—may have helped to push the president over the edge. On Tuesday, they issued a video reminding members of the U.S. Armed Forces that their oath of service requires them to refuse illegal orders, and that their loyalty is owed not to any one president, but to the Constitution itself. Normally, legislators don’t feel the need to make such an obvious declaration, but the president is using the military—including deploying troops to U.S. cities and ordering the killing of people on the high seas—in ways that almost certainly involve illegal orders. Members of Congress have a right, even an obligation, to speak up.
-Tom Nichels in The Atlantic
No comments:
Post a Comment