Trump's Open Disdain for the Rule of Law
At the presidential debate Sunday night, Donald Trump came right out and said that if he becomes president, he'll use the Department of Justice to take down his political opponent. It was an astonishingly open admission of his disregard for our legal system and fundamental constitutional principles. But it wasn't even the scariest indication in the last week that Trump thinks he's running to be America's dictator rather the president of a nation of laws.
In response to Hillary Clinton's rather banal statement that Trump owes Barack Obama an apology for claiming he wasn't an American citizen for years, Trump responded with a string of non-sequiturs that ended with a promise to get a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton for using a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state. Clinton has already been the subject of a massive FBI investigation that ended with both a revered Republican FBI director and a Democratic attorney general concluding there was no case against her. But if he were president, Trump told Clinton, "you'd be in jail."
As I have explained previously, those who think what Clinton did should be illegal should be looking to amend the law to make it illegal. We don't prosecute people for things we haven't outlawed.
But Trump thinks Clinton should be locked up because "people in this country are furious," and "it's a disgrace." Those are the words of an aspiring dictator, not someone who respects the fundamental principle that the state can't deprive a person of their freedom without being able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they broke a law.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/trumps-open-disdain-for-the-rule-of-law-w444093?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=101116_17
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