George Conway: Trump simply doesn’t understand his job
By George T. Conway III
Contributing columnist
April 14, 2020 at 7:36 p.m. EDT
Among Donald Trump’s many flaws as president is one that’s as fundamental as any: He simply doesn’t understand his job. When he ran a private company, one he owned, Trump could command all its constituent parts to do his bidding and make the rules himself. You’d think by his fourth year in the White House, he would have learned that the presidency doesn’t work that way. But obviously he hasn’t.
Trump made this clear during his briefing Monday, with an extraordinary series of statements about presidential power — well, perhaps extraordinary for anyone but him. Referring to restrictions that states have imposed to fight covid-19, Trump claimed: “The authority of the president of the United States having to do with the subject we’re talking about, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that.”
In other words, he claims the power to force the entire country to back to work, regardless of what state or local officials say. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States,” Trump asserted. “I have the ultimate authority,” he said.
“Who told you that?” a reporter asked; Trump wouldn’t say. And no doubt, couldn’t: No competent presidential adviser would tell him that. Certainly no lawyer.
It’s no excuse for Trump that he’s not a lawyer, and that, as conservative commentator Andrew C. McCarthy put it, Trump “frequently gets out over his skis when he discusses constitutional law” — that, indeed, he “mangles” it. Trump took a solemn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. After his years in the job, he ought to know something about that document.
article:
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