TRUMP - AMERICA’S MINORITY MONARCH

In the midst of the chaotic Presidency with its amateurish destructive scatterbrained foreign policy where Trump takes on China and Iran with no understanding of the psychology of his foes and no obvious plan A let alone B, it might be useful to look as to how America arose and what it stands for. Some one should tell the POTUS that he is not dealing with Brooklyn hoods whose thought processes he is in sync with. Then his racist rhetoric is being connected with the spate of domestic terror - instead of "Making America Great" again he is taking it back to the Wild West where even the cowboys had to hand their guns in at the door. This weekend in the midst of the carnage of his "Great America" he was playing golf.

American democracy is in the balance as Trump trashes the fragile fabric of centuries of evolution and tradition since the Declaration of Independence, the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, (Amendments 1 - 10 to the Constitution). Every fear that the Founders imagined and attempted to forestall is at risk in all three branches of Government in the era of Trump. 

The Federalist Papers, authored by three of the Founding Fathers - Madison, Hamilton and Jay - publicly reflected the anxieties of the pioneers who sought to create a government that could withstand the tyranny of a majority and prevent the emergence of an absolute monarch. There is little doubt as to the desire of the Founders to create a revolutionary moral democratic entity which could not be hijacked. The Constitution and Bill of Rights solutions that they enacted was to provide the checks and balances to create a democracy where “ambition” could be checked and where a majority could not ride rough shod over the rights of individuals and minorities. 

However in the final analysis any system is dependent on the bona fides and integrity of its participants. For all three branches of Government as well as the institutions that have been created to maintain the smooth running of the richest most powerful nation the world the current POTUS has shown scant respect. It has fair to say he has exhibited behaviors never witnessed in the nearly two hundred and fifty year history of the Republic by its chief executive.  Even his alter ego President Andrew Jackson, a nineteen century populist, never sunk this low. 

THE PRESIDENCY 

The prophesy of Michael Cohen, the POTUS'S former attorney and “fixer”, in a Congress hearing where he warned, “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 there will never be a peaceful transition of power” sent shivers down the spines of every thinking American. That fear was not only based on Cohen’s personal knowledge of the inner workings of the Trump mind but the public utterings and behaviors of the POTUS. 

For those who had long memories they just needed to hark back to his 2016 campaign bravado when he thought he would lose. He confided to the adoring fans that the system was rigged and If Hillary Clinton got elected, “… nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, (gun owners) - maybe there is, I don’t know”.  

With regard to him challenging an election result he has not dropped his assertion that the system is rigged and that the deep state is out to get him. Furthermore he is the only branch of government which denies that he aided and welcomed Russian intervention in his election as President of the United States and that they are on their way to doing it again. 

In fairness to THE DONALD he has not hidden his ambition, beliefs and desires. He is upfront and personal with his need to be the absolute monarch of America controlling Congress, the Judiciary and the Institutions such as the Federal Reserve, the Security infrastructure, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the Media. Everybody and every body are all there to serve him and he makes no bones about it.

Ironically it is one of the Founding Fathers’ elaborate stratagems to make the election of the President as representative as possible that allowed Trump to become Chief Executive in the first place. Trump lost the popular vote by three million to Hillary Clinton. The Constitution in involving the States to the extent that it does, by means of the Electoral College, in the election of a President, gave them an undue influence in overriding the will of the majority of “The People”. 

Trump of course claimed that his victory was of historic proportions. When faced with the persistent reality of the numbers he still would not concede arguing to this day that three to five million illegals voted which cost him winning the popular vote. Although this is a spectacular lie it is only one of ten thousand seven hundred and ninety - six documented false or misleading statements that he made in the first eight hundred and sixty - nine days in office, as of June 2019. Of course some of them are not as material such as,”… I was down there with the first responders on 9/11” or that, “I lost hundreds of friends in the Twin Tower massacre”. Other lies are designed to bolster his racist image such as he saw thousand of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey. In truth he lies about anything and everything to the extent that even The Republicans don’t bother to defend his untruths. They just argue - ignore what he says and only take note of his actions.

Trump has attacked the media labelling them unpatriotic regardless of the fact that their free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment. He has made no secret that the departments within his Administration are there to serve him and not “The People”. This objective which he broadcasts for all the world to know is most notable in relation to the traditionally independent Department of Justice. As he wailed again and again as the Investigation into Russian Intervention in the 2016 election proceeded, he needed an attorney general to protect him. Also like his friend Putin he is fighting tooth and nail to get the whole security apparatus to “look after him” rather than protect the country.

So in line with his failure to unite the country or produce his tax returns, or his conducting a campaign fabricating that he has evidence that a former President was not legitimate or just to lie as a matter of course, what is to stop Trump from refusing to accept an election result that he claims is not legitimate? To this day he claims that the vote count in the 2016 election was crooked and fixed. Furthermore he has not, to this day, dropped his assertion that the system is rigged and that the deep state is out to get him. He remains the only branch of government which denies that he aided and welcomed Russian intervention in his election as President of the United States and that they are on their way to doing it again. 

THE CONGRESS

There is little doubt that the legislative body, The Congress, was regarded by the Founders as the most powerful of the three branches. They were fearful again that the majority could become tyrannical and sought to balance the Congress, like the Electoral College, with a heavy dose of State influence by creating the Senate in addition to the House of Representatives. The former awards the same number of Senators, for example, to California with nearly forty million voters as there are in states that have one million voters.

 The Democrats who, in the 2018 midterms elections, polled eight million more votes than the Republicans are being thwarted in their House Legislative Agenda by the Republicans in the Senate. The latter body in the past was a far more bipartisan chamber, regardless of of which party was in the majority. 

In deviating from the intent and ethos of the Constitution, history will show that Trump in his vandalizing of American values had a key partner, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. The latter like Trump doesn’t give a hoot that the world knows that he has sold his soul, such as it is, to the devil. McConnell who unprecedently refused to put forward President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court with the argument that there was a Presidential election in the near future. With the same circumstances operating at present he has stated he would not hesitate to usher in a Trump appointee should a vacancy arise. 

McConnell’s slavish desire to please Trump came to a head when he refused to bring to a vote a House Bill that called for bolstering security against Russian interference in the 2020 election. He was unmercifully hammered in the media earning the appellation of “Moscow Mitch”. The motive for his sycophantic behavior is to support Trump’s denial of the security establishment's and Mueller finding that the Russians interfered in 2016 and that they are at it again, 

How is the House of Representative check and balance constitutional responsibility of the overseeing of the President working in the face of the Trump move to become the only game in town? The simple answer is not very well. Trump has made a mockery of the constitutional oversight that Congress is empowered to effect. He has used the tactic that has been a landmark of his career - challenging every request for evidence or witnesses in court, dragging the proceedings on long enough to make the outcome meaningless. With an army of lawyers he is effectively, for the moment, denying Congress its constitutional rights to oversea the Presidency.

Recognizing the dominance of the Legislative Congress the Founders gave them the responsibility to impeach and remove a President for “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Without going into any detail there is a strong case against Trump for obstructing a criminal investigation by lying under oath several times. Yet the politically savvy Democrat leader of the House will not move forward because the selfsame Republicans that impeached Bill Clinton for lying under oath in an unrelated civil case against him for sexual harassment won’t act. To ultimately remove a President it needs a two thirds majority vote in the Senate. 

The upshot of this all is that a minority elected President and Congress with a minority of the population voting for them are thwarting the intent of the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

THE JUDICIARY

A third branch of Government was added to the other two as yet another check on unconstitutional actions. Trump in his nominations to the Supreme Court and attack on Judges who disagree with him has made it quite clear that he expects the Courts to back him up. Trump dispassionately discussing the legal trajectory of one of his illegal actions on the Southern Border claimed whatever some or other Federal Judge rules it will go to the “disgraceful” Ninth Circuit of Appeals that would rule against him and then finally to The Supreme Court where he will get "a fair shake". 

His scathing criticisms of the Ninth Circuit of Appeals  have been what could be expected from a despot.

      “That’s not the law. Every case that gets filed in the Ninth Circuit we get beaten. It’s a disgrace. I tell you what this is not how it is going to go anymore”. 

Trump usually claims when rulings go against him that the Judge is an “Obama Judge” whether it is or isn’t. 

In fairness to Trump the Supreme Court in the past two decades has acted to put it most kindly in a “controversial” manner which has had the effect of aiding the minority of Republicans to maintain and gain power. The most bizarre decision was in 2000 in the case Bush versus Gore which decided the Presidency in favor of Bush. The issue was the right of a State to decide on how to run its election procedures. Electoral procedures are constitutionally the province of the States. In an historic ruling by five votes to four the Federal Supreme Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court’s injunction to perform a manual recount of the votes which would have afforded Gore the victory and Presidency. 

Then during the Obama Presidency the Court reversed an Act of Congress which limited campaign spending by companies. In what became known as The Citizen’s United case, the latter being a conservative organization, the court strangely designated companies as “individuals”. In addition the majority of Judges agreed that the corporations could spend as much as they liked as money was akin to free speech protected under the First Amendment. The conservative court, narrowly, in a five to four ruling, gave this astonishing interpretation of the Constitution. 

Recently the Supreme Court, now with their Trump nominees, shone the green light to States to gerrymander electoral districts for Federal elections. While considered less controversial by jurists their backing of the Trump decision to utilize money that Congress had allocated for other functions to help build his "beautiful wall" raised eyebrows. The reason for the concern is that the decision flies in the teeth of Congress’s power to control the purse.

Chief Justice Roberts, who unprecedentedly criticized the POTUS for labelling judges according to who nominated them, has done very little else to convince Jay H. Ell that he has a desire to become the swing judge in order to reverse the partisan reputation the Court has been labelled with.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The Irony is that the Founders’ biggest fear that there would be tyranny of the majority has resulted in their system creating a tyranny of the minority. Furthermore their checks and balances have been unable to prevent a minority elected President assuming the mantle of a monarch. 

At the end of the day the American leader and their elected representatives have to be in sync with the value system which was at the base of the Republic’s establishment:    “That we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”