Trump loves the rule of law. As long as it targets his enemies.

[Zorro]

The president’s gross distortion of facts is a problem, but legal norms themselves may yet survive him.

After his impeachment trial, President Trump declared himself, “I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country.” And then he called for investigations of those who had investigated him, undid prosecutions that had resulted from the Mueller probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, pursued his pursuers all the way to the Supreme Court, encouraged militias to “liberate Michigan,” fired inspectors general who might find wrongdoing in the wrong places and, most recently, tweeted about “some very nervous criminals out there” as he set out to get to the bottom of the bottomless “Obamagate.”

Trump places himself above the rule of law, so it’s easy to see him as a grave threat to it. But as much as the president distorts facts, the law itself is mostly still intact. The president, aided by Attorney General William Barr, other administration officials and Republicans in Congress, eagerly promotes the law, as when he tweets about perceived opponents like his fired former FBI director, James Comey (“What are the consequences for his unlawful conduct. Could it be years in jail?”), or former Obama secretary of state John Kerry (who supposedly “grossly violated the Logan Act with respect to Iran”). What’s good for the goose may be off limits for the gander, but it’s still good. We do not, for now, live in a tyranny with corrupt laws; we still have just laws. And that bodes well for the survival of norms that seem constantly under assault by a singular president.

The law only appears to be under attack because Americans disagree about facts — and about what officials should do to enforce laws in response to particular facts. But except for some arguments about presidential power under the Constitution, rarely do we disagree about what the law is. How to apply it is another matter.

Americans embrace the rule of law, but egregious departures speckle the country’s history. Often the law itself is not the culprit but rather a gross distortion of the facts applied to enforcement. For example, during the Red Scare after World War I, socialists and immigrants were broadly assumed to be dangerous and so were arrested under the Sedition Act; during World War II, Japanese Americans were broadly assumed to be loyal to Japan and so by executive order were relocated to internment camps; in the McCarthy era, people who had flirted with communism were broadly assumed to be disloyal to the United States, and so were hauled before Congress and lost their jobs. It was not so much that the laws needed changing (we agree that sedition is a crime), but rather the way people turned assumptions, particularly assumptions about large groups of other people, into facts, and the way people in power were allowed to apply the law.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-rule-law-enemies/2020/05/28/7852771a-9de7-11ea-b5c9-570a91917d8d_story.html

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1. it's more than a little facile to say the rule of law is doing fine, it's just facts we disagree on

the rule of law is not some fact-free framework. it's more than just filling out the forms. if you bend the facts so much that you destroy the principles, then it's ridiculous to point out the framework still exists.

there isn't a disagreement over facts regarding nepotism. it's not the case that both sides think nepotism is bad. as the article notes, carter's son couldn't get an intern job, but donnie's kids are all over the white house. there's nothing to hold up as great about the rule of law if there's a technicality that lets republicans get away with crap like this. the *principle* here is that republicans think it's fine when they do it. they don't think this particular case *isn't nepotism*; they know damn well it is. they just think they can get away with it so.

are we seriously expected to believe that republicans would be totally fine if president biden were to give hunter a job inside the white house? like they'd all say, yeah, biden leveraging public office to (somehow) influence hunter a job with a private company in a different country on a different continent, that's horribly corrupt; but using the powers of public office to put him directly on uncle sam's payroll, that's totally cool.

there's "agreement on rule or law but disagreement on facts" going on here, republicans simple believe that the rules shouldn't apply to them.



at some point the "rule of law" is a canard. imagine if the "rule of law" is enforced to the letter against democrats, so much so that they can't drive anymore because it's virtually impossible to drive in traffic without violating some traffic law. oops, you signaled your turn only 98 feet from the intersection! but they never enforce it again republicans. the police just says, what? did he speed right through that red light? gee, i didn't see anything.

that's not the "rule of law" anymore. it's rule of party. there are constraints against democrats and others, and there are not against republicans.

that is not the rule of law. republicans to not believe in rule of law. they believe in rule of party. the may find it convenient to pretend to care about the rule of law when it gets applied to democrats, but they don't believe in it.