“Whatever documents the president decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them. Or he can give them back to NARA if he wants.“
Somewhere, the Milhous guy is smiling.
And the Founding Fathers are weeping.
The only president prior to Donald Trump who saw himself as a sort of monarch was Richard Nixon, who tore the county apart from 1969-74. Nixon sanctioned illegal acts against his political adversaries and then claimed that they were legal because he was the president.
“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
Nixon said it. He may even have believed it. But since Republicans in his day were still relatively loyal Americans, he couldn’t get away with it.
After all, if Nixon really had felt secure in his interpretation of the law, he wouldn’t have negotiated with his vice president to be granted a pardon if he agreed to resign his office. The pardon probably cost Gerald Ford the 1976 election, but he did get a little of his own back in his statement after taking the oath of office.
“Our long national nightmare is over.”
Nearly 49 years later, that nightmare is back worse than ever.
We can argue for the next 50 years whether Trump really won the 2016 election, but there is no question there were several factors that created a sort of perfect storm. Voter suppression by Republicans, interference by foreign powers in social media and a nominee on the other side that Republicans saw as pure evil.
Then things really got nasty. Trump started acting as if he were the greatest president ever and his followers started treating him as if he were Jesus Christ’s younger brother.
Why do they love Trump so much?
First, even though his own lifestyle in no way reflects their Christian Nationalist beliefs, he says — and says and says and says — exactly what they want to hear. He tells them they are the true Americans and everyone should be forced to live the way they want them to live.
Second, he never admits he was wrong and never apologizes for anything. This one thing he learned from the Milhous guy. Nixon knew and history proved that if he never admitted his Watergate crimes, there would always be people who believed in his innocence.
One difference between the two men is while neither man said it was about him, they gave different excuses for their criminal behavior. Nixon said he was defending the office of the presidency, that him giving in would cause future presidents problems. Trump says that if his enemies weren’t after him individually, they would be after his supporters, and he was defending the rights of the only true Christians.
So when it comes to the documents that Trump stole and refused to return, his logic was completely Nixonesque. He was the president, so the papers belonged to him, he could do whatever he wanted with them and no one could make him give them back.
Essentially, there’s one basic difference between Nixon and Trump.
Impulse control.
Trump says the inside words out loud.
And that, in the end, might just be his downfall.