Donald Trump is openly breaking the law in front of us.
When Illinois governor and all-around sleazebag Rod Blagojevich found himself, in 2008, with an Illinois senate seat in a seemingly safe Democratic state to give away, he wasn’t about to give it away for free. “I’ve got this thing, and it’s fing golden,” he mused, unaware the feds were wiretapping him. “I’m just not giving it up for fing nothing. It’s a f***ing valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.” Blagojevich awarded the seat to longtime Chicago pol Roland Burris, who subsequently announced his retirement once Blagojevich was arrested for the crime of selling it to him. (The seat ended up going to Republican Mark Kirk in 2010, a wonderfully ironic denouement.)
Blago went to prison for this crime, and it feels altogether fitting that he was later pardoned for it by none other than President Donald J. Trump. (The two had become friendly during Trump’s Apprentice days.) People wondered at the time why Trump would waste his political capital pardoning a thoroughly unpopular, infamously corrupt former governor — even if the man was a self-proclaimed “Trump Democrat.” It seems clear in retrospect that the primary reason he felt free to do it was because he simply does not think what Blagojevich did was really a crime at all.
You can look all around the second Trump administration and adduce evidence in favor of this contention. One obvious example is Trump’s acceptance of a jet from Qatar in conjunction with a spate of family development deals in the country. The entire conceptual framework of the tariff regime — forcing big businesses to line up and cut private deals with the Trump administration as the price of doing business — is a more subtle but equally as important one.
But really, it’s Trump’s handling of TikTok that is the proof: TikTok is a “f***ing valuable thing” as far as Trump is concerned, and he’ll be damned if he shuts it down and earns the wrath of America’s youth simply because Congress passed a law commanding it. Such considerations seemingly never even enter into the equation for him. Why should he be restrained from using TikTok as a bargaining chip against China? Why should he have to pay the political penalty for closing it? He’s the president of the United States, after all. Laws are for little people, not meant to bind great men such as him. (“It’s not illegal if the president does it.” — Richard M. Nixon)
National Review editorialized this morning on Trump’s refusal to execute on the terms of the TikTok ban. I didn’t write the piece, but I can assure you I agree with every word of it. The fact that the president has brazenly flouted the law for months now, on a matter of pressing national security, is appalling. The fact that we have no real recourse — even those with standing to sue on this matter are terrified of incurring Trump’s wrath — and are held hostage to the whims of the president is even more appalling. I have written about this scandal many times already, and will continue writing about it as long as I must until people acknowledge that Donald Trump is openly breaking the law in front of us, privileging his personal political fortunes over the rule of law in its most basic form, and we are dangerously complacent about it.