IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2 February 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
L’État, c’est moi
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift
WASHINGTON –Louis XIV of France, the absolute monarch known as the Sun King, said, possibly apocryphally, “L’État, c’est moi,” literally, “The state, it is me,” or more commonly, “I am the state.”
America’s not so sunny President Donald Trump has spoken less literarily but in the same vein: “I alone can fix it.” “Everybody loves me.” “I am your retribution.” “I only want to be a dictator for one day.”
But “one day” continues with edict upon edict flowing from the Oval Office, buoyed by the personality cult he has created.
This is the first president we have had who has moved so quickly and aggressively to remake the entire executive branch in his image. He is the state. He is the Constitution.
In direct violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, he issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship. Just as quickly, a federal judge overruled him, setting up a confrontation before the Supreme Court. And even if that Court, packed with three appointees from his first presidency, agrees with the lower court, the question will loom: Will Trump abide by the ruling?
Trump has been steamrolling most Republican lawmakers with threats he will “primary” them by supporting their opponents when they next run for reelection. The threat has generally worked, creating a subservient Senate and House that the Republicans dominate.
The Senatorial process is “advise and consent,” not protect and defend, yet Senate Republicans behave as if it is a courtroom and they are the president’s defense attorneys, over which one Democratic senator labeled them “spineless.”
Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a man without portfolio or experience, has the dubious distinction of being the only Defense Secretary confirmed with the Vice President breaking a tie vote.
And if Kash Patel is confirmed to be FBI Director, he can be expected to carry out Trump’s retribution promise. Patel notoriously authored a book naming people in elective office he believes should be punished.
Only Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and his nominee to head Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, Jr., have been roughed up in committee, and then only due to their past outrageous statements which they fail to disabuse and their utter lack of qualifications.
Capping off the week, President Trump delivered a rant on DEI (the policy of diversity, equity, and inclusion) as the possible cause of a deadly midair collision between an American Airlines regionally operated jet and a Black Hawk Army helicopter over the Potomac just short of Reagan Airport.
Before the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Bureau) experts could even make an initial assessment, Trump was politicizing the event, offering no evidence. His insensitive and ill-timed remarks did not meet the moment of a national tragedy with significant loss of life.
Meanwhile, his march continues on well past his “Day One Dictatorship” with a subject line memo, “Fork in the Road,” that landed in the inbox of some two million federal government workers, inviting them to apply by February 6 for buy-outs with full salary through September. In one swoop he is undermining the civil service reforms enacted 150 years ago that righted the wrongs of the Spoils System that witnessed the wholesale replacement of federal workers with partisan acolytes.
Finally, or more likely not finally, in the most jingoistic fashion, Trump has launched a massive, mutually destructive, inflation-producing high tariff trade war with China, Mexico, and Canada, even claiming Canada will “cease to exist” without its trade surplus and become our “cherished 51st state.” Further, in concert with his version of Manifest Destiny, America’s God-given right to expand, he is demanding that Denmark sell Greenland to the United States and that he may order an invasion of Panama to take back the canal.
In the end, will Trump’s Day One Dictatorship, now in its third week, turn into four years – or more?
You are not The State: Vous n’est pas L’État.
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter: @douglas_cohn
© 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND