With his more brazen anti-democratic language and expansive assertions of unfettered presidential power, Donald Trump is highlighting the profound decision that Americans may confront next year.
On Monday, the campaign of the current commander-in-chief scolded the former president for making a claim over the weekend that Joe Biden is the one undermining democracy. The ex-president has previously refused to acknowledge the outcome of the last election. This debate demonstrated how Trump has built his political career on a foundation of a monumental lie, which he uses to inspire his supporters. It’s also indicative of Trump’s lack of self-restraint if he is elected next year, despite his campaign promise to attack his opponents throughout his second term.
For example, the Republican front-runner is claiming in several courts that he is exempt from the rules and precedents that apply to ordinary Americans because of his position as a former president. This will have far-reaching effects beyond the upcoming accounting in court of his tumultuous first term. It brings serious constitutional concerns about the boundaries of presidential power, especially considering his high likelihood of reelection (he is trailing President Joe Biden in several battleground states).
This is why the next election in 2024 will be a watershed event for the United States. The very foundation of American government—the Constitution—could be at stake.
Due to his apparent conviction that any executive action is, by definition, lawful, Trump’s idea of the uncontrollable presidency provides insight into his behaviour in a second term. He has already stated his intention to utilise his remaining four years in office to exact personal “retribution” on his political opponents. Clearly, a second term for the twice-impeached ex-president would jeopardise the premise that presidents do not retain monarchical power, should he win the Republican nomination and the presidency.
Judge strikes down Trump’s post-presidential immunity assumption
With four criminal trials pending against him, including two for potential election meddling connected to his fraudulent accusations of fraud in the 2020 campaign he lost, the courts may prove to be the sole institution preventing the ex-president from achieving his goals. All the charges against him have been dismissed, and he continues to deny any involvement.
Last week, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will oversee Trump’s federal election subversion lawsuit beginning in March, delivered a historic ruling rejecting his power grab, dealing a setback to his agenda. In keeping with his plan to postpone his criminal trials until after the November election, Trump is expected to drag the matter to the Supreme Court. If the court were to decide to accept the case, it would be confronted with one of its most consequential verdicts on the extent of presidential power in decades.
“His four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.” This statement strikes at the heart of Trump’s power vision, as Chutkan’s broad opinion rejects multiple threads of the president’s argument.
The American political and legal system is based on the tenets that all citizens are equal before the law and that the president is not exempt from the same legal constraints. But Trump remains steadfast in his efforts to repeal it.
His attempts to deflect responsibility for his actions in 2020 as a coordinated effort by the Biden administration to cheat in 2024 are further evidence of the ex-president’s assault on American democracy.
In particular, Trump attacked Biden’s and others’ claims over the weekend that his actions pose a danger to American democracy in the event that he is elected president in 2020.
At a Saturday campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump said that Joe Biden was not protecting American democracy. Joe Biden and his supporters are the ones bringing down American democracy. The American dream has been shattered by them. Sad to say, with them in power, the American ideal has died.
Given that Trump attempted to disrupt the lengthy record of peaceful transitions of power following the 2020 election—a result validated by every recount and court ruling that rejected his baseless accusations of voting fraud—the concept that he is a protector of democracy is ludicrous. It is typical of Trump, though, to accuse a rival of wrongdoings that he has committed. Even though there is abundant proof to the contrary, millions of Trump supporters still hold the belief that the 2020 election was stolen, demonstrating the potency of his unique capacity to create fake realities and wield them as instruments of power.
“In Donald Trump’s America in 2025, the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies,” warned Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. We don’t need your OK to say this; Trump has acknowledged it publicly. “The American people see right through it and it won’t work,” Moussa continued, “after spending a week defending his plan to rip health care away from millions of Americans. This is his latest desperate attempt at distraction.” After spending days reversing his position on an issue that many other Republicans see as politically irrelevant, Trump recently promised to make another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act if he is elected next year.
