For Trump, the law is toilet paper

Lately, contempt for the rule of law has been the Trump administration’s leading motif. The lying, the cruelty, the racism, the bellicosity, and all the other nasty qualities are all there still, of course. They are part of Donald Trump’s and his administration’s DNA. But recent headlines highlight what may the Trump’s regime most dangerous trait of all, its contempt for the rule of law.

Among the examples of Trump’s trampling of the law, recently carried out or disclosed just now, are the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for properly recusing himself in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election; the attempt to pressure the White House counsel to get the Department of Justice to prosecute two Trump political enemies, Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey; the decision to do nothing to hold accountable the Saudi crown prince for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump has done all this in plain view. Sessions has been doing Trump’s bidding on immigration, hardline law enforcement, and everything else except break Department of Justice rules in order to protect Trump on Russia. The president made it clear that is why Sessions had to go. So he fired him and replaced him with a loyal lap dog.

Trump’s effort to put Comey and Clinton in jail was reported this week in the New York Times. No need to comment on Trump’s vindictive obsession with Hillary Clinton. But the intention to use the Department of Justice to punish Clinton gratuitously reflects on of Trump’s darker sides. Comey, on the other hand, was fired for the same reason as Sessions, the refusal to help the president obstruct justice. What is respect for the Constitution compared to loyalty to Trump? Vengeance is mine, says the false god.

In the case of Khashoggi, the CIA told Trump it had conclusively established that the crown prince personally ordered the murder. The President ignored that and went on to tell the media that “we will never know.” On multiple occasions, Trump has made it clear that for him the crime is not worth ruining the excellent and lucrative relation with Saudi Arabia.

This is callous enough for me to believe that Trump sees things just that way, but there may be more to it than that. The relationship with Saudi Arabia is not as economically favorable to the United States as Trump claims, according to the experts. But it is very lucrative for Trump personally. Moreover, it’s not hard to imagine that Trump envies the crown prince’s license to deal decisively with inconvenient journalists, those enemies of the people.

Those three are only the most recent and spectacular cases of Trump body-slamming the law. Indeed, Trump has been clashing with the law and the Constitution from the first day. He has never stopped.

Muslim immigration ban. Blanket denial of asylum. Forcible separation of families at the border and the caging of children. Threat of denying birthright citizenship in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The frequency with which the courts have pushed back and invalidated Trump’s legal assaults shows the degree to which he has been pushing the envelope. How far would Trump’s authoritarian instincts have taken this country but for an independent judiciary? It’s an alarming thought.

Adding to the alarm is the fact that the Republican Congress and the Trump administration have been racing to transform the courts into just another arm of the right wing. They have had scary success. The Supreme Court is gone. Appellate and district courts are quickly trending in the same direction. The Republicans, by loading the courts with rightist judges, appointed for life, are well on their way to setting in stone what may well be a short-lived moment of reactionary rule.

That is the most pessimistic development of all. The older white male voters that form the backbone of the nationalist and right-wing Trump core are continuously diminishing. Younger voters, women, minorities will play a larger political role in coming decades. They are much more progressive than today’s political elites—from either party.

But the Republicans are trying hard to deny them that chance. Through their lifetime judicial appointments they are reaching into the future and kill the changes they fear. It’s a Gordian knot. Everybody knows how to deal with that kind of knot. But who will and how?