A president without precedent
President Trump has produced precious little of the law and order he promised in his “American carnage” inauguration speech. In fact, six long months later, Trump is openly attacking his own top law enforcer, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, contributing to a sense of lawlessness and disorder more palpable than any that existed before he took office.
Trump’s displeasure stems from the attorney general’s recusal from the investigation of the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia, which was Sessions’ most upstanding decision to date and, given his intimate involvement with the campaign, an ethically inevitable one. Trump, it seems, would rather use the Justice Department to hound his rival Hillary Clinton and plug “leaks” about the investigation of his campaign.
Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey and Sessions’ recusal helped bring about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to lead that investigation. Undermining Sessions could enable Trump to hire an attorney general who could fire Mueller. Especially after reports that Trump’s top campaign advisers met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer offering dirt on Clinton — and that the president is exploring his power to pardon himself and his cronies — such a move against Mueller’s investigation would usher in a real crisis of law and order.
Nor is the president contributing to a sense of American security or stability on other fronts. His efforts to cajole his fellow Republicans in the Senate into undoing the Affordable Care Act bore some fruit Tuesday, when the Senate narrowly voted to begin an open-ended debate that could deprive tens of millions of medical coverage. Trump revealed the depth of his disregard for the details after the vote when he told reporters that Obamacare would be replaced with “a great health care” that would be “really, really wonderful.”
Trump continues to erode confidence in the government in smaller ways, too — from attempting to enlist Navy sailors in congressional lobbying to treating a crowd of Boy Scouts to a rant in which he rehashed the details of his Electoral College victory, threatened to fire a Cabinet member standing next to him and reminisced about a Manhattan cocktail party.
More encouragingly, the House voted Tuesday to impose new sanctions for Russia’s election interference, which Trump has refused to fully acknowledge, and limit the president’s power to reverse them. House Speaker Paul Ryan, meanwhile, defended the special counsel as “anything but” partisan. Congress and other institutions’ strength and courage to counter a wayward presidency are being tested as seldom before in American history.