In his first 48 hours back in office, Donald Trump has pushed the powers of the US president to their limits.
His former national security adviser John Bolton has warned that anyone who ever disagrees with him should worry about retribution.
Gwenda Blair: He’s shifting his brand, I think would be a way to put it. He spent most of his career establishing that brand as being a business titan and being incredibly successful. So successful, he, you know, rolled over bankruptcies. He forged ahead. He became a TV star, eventually ended up in the White House. But in 2020, he lost an election. He spent the last four years, you know, trying to resurrect that brand as being successful. And indeed, I think what we saw at the inauguration is part of what’s happened is he’s come out as not just success, but sort of kind of a regal, king-like, God anointed him. He’s now not just a president, but on the edge of monarch.
Matt Frei: And, of course, he’s got more powers than ever before. He’s got the Supreme Court more or less in his court. He’s got a majority on Capitol Hill. What are the limits to his power at the moment?
Gwenda Blair: One of the things he’s done is he announced that he was going to get rid of birthright citizenship. The idea that anyone born on American soil was automatically a citizen. Immediately, I believe it’s 22 state attorney generals filed suit against that idea. It’s in the constitution. Whether he can roll over the constitution the way he rolled over those bankruptcies and rolled over all of the indictments for over the last four years, we’ll see. That’s been his MO. if there’s a rule, I can break it.
Matt Frei: That is also perhaps the biggest test for this republic, isn’t it?
Gwenda Blair: He literally said in so many words, the constitution, it doesn’t limit me. One of the other parts of the constitution that I think everyone is waiting to see if he’s going to test is the limit of two terms on a president. That couldn’t be more written in stone as far as US law goes. Can he erase that, role over it, ignore that? He’s managed to ignore any number of constraints throughout his career.
Matt Frei: When you hear Donald Trump saying that he was put here by God, that God saved him from the assassin’s bullet, God put him here for his second term in office. What does that make you think?
Gwenda Blair: He’s claiming divine intervention, if not right. And certainly looking at that inauguration, there was a very regal cast to it. I think there is a very, you know, kind of not very indirect suggestion that he’s not just a president, he’s a monarch. And the entire campaign of Trump for the last eight years and especially recently has been to depict the US as a country in enormous disarray, at great danger and needing to ditch all those regulations, all of those constraints on government power. And for him to be able to take charge and lead.
Matt Frei: I’m sure that Donald Trump himself would dispute that if he if he heard you say it. But at the same time there are some sort of curious similarities, aren’t there, to courtly life? You’ve got the princelings vying with each other for, you know, the monarch’s attention. I mean, describe to us the interaction within the court itself behind me.
Gwenda Blair: Trump’s management style from back when he was a real estate, in real estate in New York, has been to have, it’s kind of like a wheel. He would be the hub and everybody else was a spoke and they reported to him directly. It was all about making them fearful of, you know, having to have loyalty to him directly and eliminating any kind of like alliances on any kind of horizontal basis. And he’s established that now in the White House.