"I'm the only one that matters": Trump's chilling imperial power-grab
Trump has never understood, or respected, the limits on presidential power. Now he’s trying to make them disappear
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
11.06.2017•8:05 AM
President Donald Trump is overseas right now, doing personal appearances at his properties and making a fool of himself. So far, he's asked Japanese car makers to start making cars in the United States, apparently ignorant of the fact that three out of four Japanese-branded cars and trucks are already manufactured in America. And he hawked U.S. military equipment as if he were selling Trump steaks on YouTube.
That wasn't the worst of it. He also told American and Japanese troops that no nation should "underestimate American resolve." Then he quipped, "Every once in a while, in the past, they underestimated us. It was not pleasant for them, was it?"
Trump's previous foreign trips have also embarrassing, but he seems more off-kilter than usual this time. Thats obviously because of the pressure he's under back home with the indictments of his former campaign officials by special counsel Robert Mueller. That pressure has once again brought out into the open the authoritarian impulses that are becoming more and more pronounced by the day.
Back when Trump took out full-page ads calling for capital punishment and allowing police to brutalize citizens he was just another tabloid blowhard. And during the presidential campaign, when he endorsed torture and war crimes and made racist comments about a judge's Mexican heritage, people assumed he was just being hyperbolic. When he repeatedly declared his opponent guilty of crimes, even spitting out the nasty jibe, "If I were president, you'd be in jail," at Hillary Clinton in a presidential debate, nobody thought he actually meant it. But after more than nine months of his presidency, it's become clear that Trump truly has no respect for the rule of law.
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https://www.salon.com/2017/11/06/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trumps-chilling-imperial-power-grab/
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