Kyle Sammin: Trump isn’t an outlier — he’s the culmination of a trend
At Donald Trump’s address to Congress in January, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) held up a sign for the cameras that read “this is not normal.”
Stansbury is partly right. Trump is certainly different from the ordinary run of American presidents, but that is part of the reason the people elected him.
But she’s also partly wrong. Trump is not a radical aberration, but the culmination of a trend in American governance that has seen the executive growing stronger and Congress growing weaker for nearly a hundred years. If he ignores Congress and the courts and acts with the phone and the pen rather than traditional legislation, it is not so much a new idea as a more intense version of an old one.
Let’s consider some of Trump’s “not normal” actions.
Last month, Trump’s Homeland Security people deported a man without a hearing in what they admitted was a mistake. The man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is a citizen of El Salvador who came here illegally but was permitted to stay by a judge. Instead of reversing that ruling through the normal process, the administration just flew him back to El Salvador, where he remains in prison.
That is indeed a high-handed executive action that shows disregard for individual liberties and the other branches of government. But imagine if he had done much worse. What if instead of being deported, the man was killed. And what if instead of being an illegal immigrant, he was an American citizen? That would definitely be “not normal,” right?
But, of course, an American president did just that in 2011 when Barack Obama ordered the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki by drone strike.
Then, as now, there was the claim that the executive could make this decision alone, without oversight. Then, as now, we were told that this was a really bad guy, that we shouldn’t mind what was happening to him. And al-Awlaki certainly was bad — he was a terrorist who was making war against the United States. But he was also born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a natural-born American citizen who should have received the due process of law before being killed.
It wasn’t even a mistake — they knew he was an American. Some in Congress called for stripping him of his citizenship, a fate clearly warranted by the fact that he was waging war against us. But that didn’t happen. The President and the CIA just killed him.
Should we shed tears over a terrorist? Maybe not. But the rule of law was damaged that day and a citizen’s rights were trampled. As with Garcia’s deportation, if it had been done the right way, there would be no objection, but neither Obama nor Trump wanted to spend any time on the due process of law.
There are other examples of Trump’s abnormality that are very much in line with prior administrations. He has excluded the Associated Press from press briefings and is mean to journalists generally. Horrible! But not as horrible as when Obama used the Justice Department to seize without notice the records of 20 AP office phone lines as well as reporters’ home and cell phone records. Or when he secretly monitored a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, searching through his personal emails and cell phone records.
Trump wants to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status? It’s a disingenuous overreach that imposes the administration’s views on a private institution — just like the government did to Bob Jones University in the early 1980s. There was not much complaining from prominent people then, because BJU’s fault — banning interracial dating — was even then widely seen as wrong, a relic of the segregationist past. But the method by which the government expressed its disapproval — withdrawing tax-exempt status from the school — gave the executive vast new coercive power, which Trump now may use on other schools for less clear-cut reasons.
It’s all of a piece. A century of imperial presidency has given the president power the Roman emperors could never have imagined. The only difference now compared to ten or twenty years ago is that Trump uses it openly, and against people who aren’t used to it.
Is that it? Is the answer, then, that tit-for-tat constitutional violations are fine? That we must excuse Trump because the Democrats did all of this before? And excuse those Democrats because Republicans before them did the same?
No, the answer is that we need to pull out of this death spiral and start demanding virtue and true adherence to liberal democracy and limited government from all of our elected leaders.
We can’t address any of the things we dislike about the Trump administration without also admitting all of the bad decisions that came before. Violations of the separation of powers and the people’s individual liberties continue to pile up because we (and the generations before us) have all acquiesced in the usurpation of power by the executive branch wherever the executive at the time was on our “team.”
As long as we keep doing that, things will only get worse. And they are going to get worse before they get better.
Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.
Excellent! Very well said, and needed to be said.
Kyle: Garcia wasn’t allowed to stay here by the judge: he was prevented from being sent specifically to El Salvador (for fear of retribution from gang violence – why? because he was a gang member?). And he had 3 different court hearings leading up to that. Get it right. You sound like CNN. It’s a tough job to quell and correct the traitorous lawlessness of Biden and Mayorkas over the last 4 years regarding our immigration policies. The obstructionists are on the attack, and hopefully will have to answer to the DOJ.
In previous posts you have claimed, without proof, that Mr. Garcia was seen by two judges, not three, Let me know when you stop embellishing what you say and provide actual facts.
He was denied bail by 2, with a third try with a new judge on an ginned up asylum case. Try to keep up. I guess it’s difficult with all that TDS and Trump living rent free in your coconut to actually make any sense at all.
Trump is the outlier, no President has done anything at this level
Freezing billions of dollars in money that had been approved by Congress.
Fired 18 Inspector General’s.
Deported several hundred people without due process and 75% of them have no gang affiliation or criminal history.
Attempted to overturn a Constitutional amendment.
Blackmailed multiple law firms into to donating $950 million dollars in prono bono hours to the government.
Allowed a Special Government Employee to fire government employees who were investigating his companies and cancelled a contract that now benefits one of his companies.
Tried to blackmail Harvard University into have Trump appointed political Commissars to determine what can and cannot be taught. Violating the First Amendment.
Arrested Judges.
Threatened to
The Secretary of Defense has has violated classified information sharing multiple times.
Has and continue to cancel visas in violation of the First Amendment.
All of this and more hapnned in the first 100 days of Trump taking office, not 8 years and done legally.
P.S. I forgot to say that Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion, get them fined, and their licensed cancelled because he did not approve of how Kamala Harris answered a question about Trump.
Is that what your handlers have told you? He sued them because CBS’ “60 Minutes” interview with Harris and the associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales of the presidential election in her favor. The lawsuit also says Trump is seeking for the network to “publicly release the full, unedited transcript of the [interview].” They purposely edited her psychedelic word salads and circular nonsense, as well as her actual answers to questions being changed by her campaign. ABC and Stephanopoulos and Meta found out the hard way that you can’t interfere
with a presidential election by peddling lies about him, or stacking the deck against him. Frankly both CBS and ABC should have been fined for purposely lopsided real time fact-checking on air. Blatant attempt to influence an election.
It takes bold action to erase the remnants of DEI, radical activist judges, weaponized justice departments and liberal slush fund waste that cripple this country. Ever notice when the government got shut down in years past, nobody noticed, except people visiting national parks? That’s how bloated the government is. Trillions of dollars in debt and the possibility of the entire country collapsing. Past politicians were cowards. Trump has the guts to do the hard work needed to reverse the trend. I can’t wait for his third term.
When there have been government shutdowns many people have been affected, not just the National Parks. The National Park system is the most obvious way to show the impact. did you also know that the National Parks budget is $3.5 billion and it generates $55 billion in revenue. So why was it necessary to fire thousands of park employees when the department pays for itself?
Let me translate the rest for you.
“Activist Judges” – Judges who rule against Trump.
“Weaponized Justice Departments” – Legitimate cases against Trump, his executive orders, the people who work for him, and the convictions of the 1/6 insurrections who assaulted 108 police officers.
” the possibility of the entire country collapsing” – Which is due to Trump’s excessive tariffs against long term yrading partners in Europe, China, and India. To name a few. Do you know what was the cause of the Great Depression in American? President Hoover announced excessive tariffs which caused prices for food and other basic necessities to sky rocket.
Nice fun facts about the National parks but doesn’t affect my comment on government bloat.
Let me translate for you: Judges that rule against the constitution and rule of law to enforce their own political beliefs. FAFO like that judge in Wisconsin who has been suspended by their State supreme court for obstructing justice. Those “legitimate ” cases brought against Trump have evaporated like the flatulence that they were. Interesting that the DA’s in NY and GA, Fany and Leticia, who brought these bogus charges are now facing charges of their own. Interesting also is that the kangaroo court travesty J6 committee has been disbanded, with members losing their congressional elections and being handed pre-emptive pardons from somebody signing documents for the cognitively addled former hair-sniffing disaster that was Joe Biden. Also, your kindergarten explanation of the Great depression left out the crash of the overvalued stock market, overproduction, the great dustbowl drought of 1930’s, a monetarist money supply shortage, and bank failures. I guess they didn’t fit your narrative, huh comrade?
“Nice fun facts about the National parks but doesn’t affect my comment on government bloat.” It did destroy your claim about how only the National Parks are affected. When a shutdown occurs it affects many Americans, one example of this is veterans and The V.A.
“J6 committee has been disbanded,” – So when 108 police officers were assaulted you were okay with that. So law and order only applies when Republicans want accountability. The convicted people were had due process in a a court, they were not tried bu the committee. The committee was trying to determine why this happened.
As for my kindergarten explanation. the tariffs were punishing, the stock market is currently overvalued, and with the changing long term weather patterns we are looking at another depression and it will not be great.
You’re sounding desperate. J6 cared about 1 thing: Get Trump. Pelosi even helped orchestrate it by refusing National Guard use, Cheyney and Schiff coached testimony and tampered with witnesses. FBI lying about having agents imbedded in the crowd. Your simple mind is simplifying the whole event. And to answer your question – no, I am not ‘OK’ with police officers being assaulted, or am I OK with a foolish overreacting police officer murdering a military veteran. Thanks for agreeing with me on your purposely misleading statement about the cause of the Great Depression. Don’t worry Chicken Little, there have been safeguards put in place since the democrat induced housing collapse of 2008.
Kyle Sammin’s article is big “STAIN” on B&L’s credibility. I just read my last article on B&L. Goodbye.