President Donald Trump shared his own, oddly capitalized spin on “l’etat, c’est moi” on Saturday, claiming that his recent actions should fall outside discussions of constitutionality.
After several weeks of grabbing power for the executive branch, undermining Congress and bullying the press, Trump shared that he should be above the law if the ends justify his means.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after his early executive orders and budget-slashing work with Elon Musk’s questionably legal Department of Government Efficiency were called into court by a host of lawsuits.
Trump may be right. The Supreme Court granted the office of the president broad immunity in Trump v. United States, writing that “the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.”
Given the ever-growing amount of power being sucked into the executive branch, and the unwillingness of the other two branches of government to claw back their own constitutionally allotted powers, it does seem like Trump will be able to bend any law to his will by declaring his own actions legal as he does them.
Vice President JD Vance set the stage for a potential brush-off of the judicial branch earlier this month, saying that the Trump admin may well ignore orders they don’t agree with.
“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance wrote on X.
The president has already shown that he believes a freeze on federal funds appropriated by Congress is within his “legitimate power” and has taken aim at the typically non-partisan world of civil servants. His post makes clear that he doesn’t expect any consequences for his actions and the last decade of Trumpist America has only validated that assumption.
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