The Rebellion Against Trump Grows As A Majority Of Americans Are On The Side Of No Kings

Donald Trump thought that he could turn himself into an imperial president, but as Republicans have mocked No Kings, new polling shows that the American people support the rebellion.

Imperial presidencies, or attempted imperial presidencies, aren’t new to the United States.

In 2009, the Democratic majority on the House Judiciary Committee released a report titled, “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush.”

The forward to the report began:

In 1973, historian Arthur Schlesinger coined the term ‘‘Imperial Presidency’’ to describe a presidency that had assumed more power than the Constitution allows, and had circumvented the traditional checks and balances of our constitutional system. Until recently, the Nixon Administration seemed to represent the singular embodiment of that idea. But today, as the Bush Administration comes to a close, there can be little doubt concerning the persistence of Mr. Schlesinger’s notion. More than three decades later, Mr. Schlesinger himself characterized the Bush Administration as ‘‘the Imperial Presidency redux,’’ although he more optimistically predicted that ‘‘democracy’s singular virtue—its capacity for self-correction— will one day swing into action.’’

Today, in hindsight I can attest to the prescience of Mr. Schlesinger’s warnings of unchecked power, even as we vigorously pursue the much-needed democratic self-correction he anticipated. The Bush Administration’s approach to power is, at its core, little more than a restatement of Mr. Nixon’s famous rationalization of presidential misdeeds: ‘‘When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.’’ Under this view, laws that forbid torturing or degrading prisoners cannot constrain the president because, if the president ordered such acts as Commander in Chief, ‘‘that means it’s not illegal.’’

Under this view, it is not the courts that decide the reach of the law—it is the president—and neither the judiciary nor Congress can constrain him. And where statutory law or the Constitution itself appear to impose obstacles to presidential whim, creative counselors can be relied upon to reach whatever result the president desires.

What is different from any other previously attempted imperial presidency is that the majorities in the House and Senate are firmly on board with surrendering their power and authority as a coequal branch of government to an imperial president.

The same Republicans who have placed Trump above them and bowed to their king have also mocked and attacked the No Kings protests. They claim that, of course, this person, whose administration brags about controlling Congress, is not a king.

Republicans in the House and Senate scoff at the idea that they are taking orders from Trump, while they shut down the government and have refused to negotiate to open it back up, all under the president’s direction.

Trump is an imperial president because Republicans have given up their power to check him.

The No Kings protests are an effort to take that power back, and they are resonating with the American people.