Back in February President Donald Trump posted about being a king.
The official White House social media account then mocked up this image and posted it:
Of course, the impression conveyed was this was some sort of ‘joke’.
But, from another perspective it was not a joke: for if you look and listen you will find that Trump very much has a monarchical view of his own powers as president.
So I wrote about this at Prospect:
In essence: my argument was that Trump sees not only executive power as within his remit, but he also believes that legislative and judicial functions are also subject to his control, indeed whim.
This weekend, as the “No Kings” demonstrations gained force in the United States, I spelled out this view on social media:
On one level, this is all constitutional theory: power is power, and it does not much practically matter what the supposed theoretical origin of that power is.
But it also points to Trump’s lack of restraint: he does not believe there is or should be anyone or anything who can say ‘No’ to what he wants to do.
This week at Prospect, four months on from the column above, I set out how Trump is now mobilising troops against his own citizens – click and read here.
Here Trump is – like with ‘emergency’ tariffs and ‘enemy alien’ deportations/removals – purporting to use old ancient Congressional laws to do as he wishes.
Of course, on any sensible legal analysis, those old laws do not bear the load which Trump and his circle are placing on them.
But the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress seem not seem to care, and the conservative-dominated judiciary is in no rush to hold his actions as ‘ultra vires’ – that is outside of his legal powers.
Trump is thereby acting as a king not because of the inherent executive powers allocated to the president in the United States constitution, but because he has robbed the legislature and judiciary of their powers too.
That is ‘robbed’, with the implicit if not explicit support of the legislators and judges.
One of many possible outcomes of the current crisis is violent civil conflict in the United States – you have protests and an armed state seeking to use its military powers against those protests, and you have deep civil contradictions as to Trump’s abuse of his powers.
There is now more than enough material for a future GCSE or A-Level student to start an essay with “A civil war in the United States became inevitable when…”.
But a civil war is not inevitable: another outcome is that the United States just becomes an ever more illiberal and oppressive polity where nothing can stand in the way of Trump, or of his followers and successors.
That is the thing about constitutional crises: if you can work out the outcome, it is not a crisis.
But whatever the effects, one of the causes will be Trump’s own sense of the limitless nature of his powers.
He believes he can do whatever he wants – and there seems good evidence that he is empirically right in thinking so.
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I’ve been writing up the Wars of the Roses for my 10 yr old son to read and thinking a lot about civil wars. Are there parallels twixt WoR and 2025 US? Few I suspect. Cade’s rebellion (1450) was a precursor of the WoR. End of 100 Yrs Wars (1453) and soldiers on the loose. How many military in US with not much to do for now? Extremely rich and thus – mostly powerful – ‘subjects’. A very weak (Henry VI) and then – in effect – a usurper king (on and off the throne). It was a war twixt the very rich and their underlings. How many rich and consentient underlings do Trump and his sycophants have?
What about the National guard chain of command? Do individuals bear any personal legal responsibility in United States law if they execute an unlawful order (as they appear to be doing)?
A couple of quick thoughts. First, I’m not sure that the distinction between monarchical and presidential outlooks is all that great.
Here’s the thought: The Constitutional powers of the Presidency are great. For example, there’s an enormous amount of governmental patronage available, precisely because of the separation of powers doctrine. In many ways, the President has powers analogous to the kinds of powers available to a slightly modernised Hanoverian monarch, give or take – which is unsurprising, given that the Constitution was written when it was, with the prevailing account of power.
The difference, of course, is that the European monarchy from which the Presidency went through the motions of differentiating itself was actually freer to reform and easier to rein in precisely because of the lack of a written Constitution; the Presidency is trappen in amber. I therefore offer as a thesis that the Presidency has, beneath the surface, more in common with a late eighteenth-century monarchy than does a twenty-first century monarchy.
Second: I believe that the French king to whom you allude is Louis XVI. But the l’État aphorism is Louis XIV’s, and he was much wiser.
The golden rule of internet comments: any comment that starts “I’m not sure” invariably shows its author to be very sure indeed of their view. I will never understand why some commenters start their comments with that formulation.
Will the American Republic as you have described it be restored once Trump is gone? There are examples of the restoration of an ancestral constitution once the dictator was safely dead: Great Britain after the death of Cromwell is one.
The founding fathers were undoubtedly steered by their understanding of the Roman Republic.
Roman dictators – Sulla and Caesar in particular – were allowed legislative and executive power (which is why originally a dictatorship was to last only six months).
Although Julius Caesar turned down a kingly crown, he was seen as having achieved as dictator perpetuus (dictator for life) precisely that monarchical power which the ancestral constitution of the Romans was designed to prevent. Augustus and his successors came to have precisely that power although they were careful not to take the office of dictator.
After Sulla’s death (although he in theory laid down his dictatorship before his death while he lived he exercised the power of life and death notoriously having one opponent strangled by his slaves) the Roman Republic was restored.
On the other hand the Roman Republic was never restored after Augustus rose to supreme power.
I don’t think a civil war is inevitable, or even likely, unless protests like No King’s become violent and Trump turns out the troops on them. I don’t think the opposition want armed conflict, and Americans tend to be patient. They know things can change dramatically at the mid terms, when Trump may lose his majority in both houses of Congress. He’d become a lame duck.
I think the only possibility of civil war would be if Trump creates an emergency and cancels the elections in 2028.