Gov. JB Pritzker began the week with a rather extraordinary speech in Chicago, responding to Donald Trump’s apparent plans to deploy National Guard troops to public streets in the Midwest’s largest city.
“This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances,” the Democratic governor explained. “What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”
Pritzker added, “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.”
A day later, the Republican responded with some memorable comments of his own. NBC News reported:
Trump asserted during today’s Cabinet meeting that his authority as commander in chief has no limits when it comes to deploying the National Guard. ‘Not that I don’t have — I would — the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.’
And while it’s true that voters did return Trump to the White House, the idea that this gives him, as The New York Times put it, “unlimited power as president to deploy the National Guard in any state” is absurd.
Or as Pritzker responded via social media, “No, Donald. You can’t do whatever you want.”
In case this isn’t obvious, Trump’s line isn’t just extreme, it’s also a radical departure from his own earlier position. During his first term, the president agreed that Guard deployments in states were dependent on gubernatorial support. As recently as last year, while serving as South Dakota’s Republican governor, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that if Joe Biden tried to federalize National Guard troops, it would constitute a “direct attack on states’ rights” and spark a “war” between Washington, D.C., and GOP-led state governments.
In Trump’s second term, however, as the president’s authoritarian vision becomes more overt and his subtext becomes text, he no longer has any use for the constraints he and others in his party used to recognize as legitimate. On the contrary, as far as he’s concerned, he has “the right to do anything” he wants to do.
At the same White House Cabinet meeting, Trump declared that “a lot” of unnamed people “would rather have a dictator” just so long as the tyrant combats crime. Soon after, as part of the three-hour event, the president echoed that line, arguing, “Most people say, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants.”
For those keeping score, Trump first pushed this line two weeks ago, and he doubled down earlier this week, claiming that “a lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’”
With the president bringing up the claim twice during his Cabinet meeting, it means that he’s now pushed this line four times in two weeks. (Not to be left out, Vice President JD Vance touted a similar position last week.)
The White House’s line, in other words, is increasingly unambiguous: As far as the administration is concerned, the underlying principles of democracy, Americans’ freedom, the rule of law, the dangers of a police state and limited government are meaningless. All that matters is Trump’s pursuit of what he considers to be worthwhile goals, rooted in the idea that the ends justify the means — even if the ends involve putting aside how a free society is supposed to function.
As a rule, it pays to focus less on what Trump says and more on what he does. But in some occasions, what he says helps the public understand what he’s doing and why. And in this instance, the president has abandoned all subtlety about the scope of his power grab and the twisted beliefs that undergird his actions.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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