Trump Approaches Kingship

The Declaration of Independence lists 27 specific grievances against King George III. A similar list of grievances against Donald Trump would dwarf that number, and Trump has only been in office a hundred days.

And Trump keeps on adding grievances every day by defying the law and the Constitution, openly and brazenly.

More than 200 lawsuits have been filed to stop him, and most of them have been successful. Judges all over the nation have been slamming him down in case after case. He appeals every one of them, of course, and, since courts are designed to move slowly, those cases are just beginning to trickle into the Supreme Court. The Court will rule on some of his pet cases soon, but whatever it rules could lead to serious problems.

If the Court rules in Trump’s favor, it will give Trump ownership of all three branches of government, since he already owns Congress. He would be king of America. His dream would come true.

But if the Court rules against him, and he chooses to ignore the court, what then? The Court could hold all sorts of court proceedings and prosecutions, but it has no physical power to enforce any rulings. After all, Trump has all the guns, all the power. Not only does he command the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, but he also controls the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, “Department of Government Efficiency” and all the rest that he has made sure are on his side. Who’s going into the White House to physically remove him? The king has his guard ready.

So it appears obvious that Trump is more than ready to defy the Supreme Court. Courts do not tell kings what to do. Kings tell the courts.

And yes, Trump does consider himself a king. To demonstrate it, he’s honoring himself with a multimillion-dollar birthday present on June 14 – a military parade, just like the world’s other dictators do. (Yes, yes, I know, he’s saying it’s in honor of the Army’s 250th anniversary, but if you believe that I have some beachfront property in Kansas I’ll sell you. Trump has never done anything for anybody except for himself.)

Consider these recent quotes that show he thinks of himself as a king:

• Shortly after taking office, he wrote on Truth Social, “He who saves his Country does not violate any law.”
• Asked by a journalist if he felt the need to uphold the Constitution, shortly after he took an oath to uphold it, he replied, “I don’t know.”
• Asked if he agrees that every person in the United States is entitled to due process, he replied, “I don’t know.”
• Pronouncing that he should be able to deport any undocumented immigrants without court hearings, which the Constitution forbids, he said, “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.”
• He labeled the Impoundment Control Act, which limits the president’s power to withhold (impound) congressionally appropriated funds, “unconstitutional”, and on that basis alone he has illegally impounded billions upon billions of dollars that Congress ordered to be spent.

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And those are just his words. His actions speak much louder. I wrote about those on May 14 (see Trump Would Cancel Elections) so I won’t list them again. Suffice it to say that I quoted Substack commentator Robert Hubbell as saying Trump has violated the Constitution hundreds of times since he took office. Hubbell didn’t list them, but instead he reduced them into 11 categories.

Trump’s most heinous constitutional crime, perhaps the gravest constitutional crime that a president could ever commit, was trying to thwart the peaceful transfer of power. First he made myriad attempts to have the courts overturn a legitimate election. When that failed, he fomented the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to stop the Electoral College votes from being counted, then watched the rioters run free even though the people in his circle begged him to stop it. Later, he pardoned or remanded the sentences of those who were convicted of riot-related crimes.

Now Trump is claiming extraordinary unilateral authority to regulate federal elections although the Constitution clearly reserves that right to the states in the first place and Congress in the second. But if he is successful in his claim, he could change election rules that would guarantee he would always win – just like dictators around the globe do.

He’s also pushing Congress, in his kinglike way, to pass his “big, beautiful bill”, which is designed, very literally, to rob the poor to give to the rich. It would cut $880 billion from Medicaid, decimate the SNAP program that provides food for needy children, slash 40 percent from a program that provides rental assistance to low-income people, reduce the National Institutes of Health funding by 37 percent, and cut the National Science Foundation funding in half. State and international programs would lose 84 percent of their funding, the EPA 54 percent, and the Department of Labor 35 percent. Defense spending would increase by 13 percent and Homeland Security by 65 percent (giving Trump more power to pursue his costly deportation agenda).

How would these cuts affect Americans? The highly respected Penn Wharton Budget Model found that the pain would fall disproportionately on the poorest among us, including those near or below the poverty line. People making between about $51,000 and $17,000 could lose about $700 on average in after-tax income beginning in 2026, which would worsen over the next eight years. People reporting less than $17,000 in income would lose around $1,000, which also would increase over time.

By contrast, each of those in the top 0.1 percent would gain an average of more than $389,000 in after-tax income in 2026.

And giveaways would remain for crypto businesses, corporations and those in Trump’s good graces. Trump himself would also be fine, of course. His crypto enterprises alone
have grown his family fortune by $2.9 billion since he won back the White House.

None of that accounts for Trump’s illegal consumer taxes (tariffs) that also fall hardest on lower-income people.

What stands out as obvious to all freedom-loving people is that Donald Trump must go. He must be expelled from the White House, and any MAGA-loving government officials who remain must be forced to understand that we do not want you and we will not tolerate you and your brand of dictatorial government.

But if Congress and the Supreme Court cannot or will not stop him, who can and will?

Us! We the People! And if that sounds like an oversimplified delusion, it is not. Trump is so aware of the people’s power to stop him he is pouring huge amounts of energy into overcoming us. He’s “flooding the zone” so that we will exhaust ourselves and give up. It is a major part of the Project 2025 plan, and he’s working it well.

And so we must never give up, never quit. Our democracy depends on us. Frederick Douglass put it this way: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

One crucially important thing that everyone who is physically capable must do is turn out. We must show up whenever there is a town hall meeting, an empty-chair event or any other special event.

Which brings us back to Trump’s June 14 birthday parade honoring himself. Indivisible and other pro-democracy groups are sponsoring a nationwide “No Kings” protest for that day to let him – and Congress and the Supreme Court and the world — know that he cannot exhaust us. He cannot defeat us. His drive to be our king will only inspire us, and we will never give up, never go away, never submit to a dictator. Never!

For that to happen, big numbers must turn out for rallies that day, wherever they exist. The organizations’ “Hands Off” rally last April 5 drew more than 5 million people around the nation, but we need to show the numbers are increasing. If you attended the April rally, please do so again on June 14. And if you did not participate then, please, please do it this time. Every person counts.

We are winning. We will win.

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