In a rhetorical sense, it is fair enough that people ask, “Is the Trump presidency illegitimate?” After all, with his lie that Obama was not a citizen, Donald Trump drew the national political spotlight by inventing the whole idea of presidential illegitimacy. However, while they cite legitimate concerns like Russian influence in the election, voter suppression, fake news and alternative facts, betrayal of the “forgotten people” by stacking his staff and cabinet with billionaires and Goldman Sachs executives, and a popular vote loss of nearly three million votes, or more than two percent of the vote in contrast to George Bush's popular vote loss of less than one half of one percent, they ask the wrong question.
Losing the popular vote by such a wide margin does not make Trump an illegitimate president, just an unpopular president without a popular mandate. When Trump breaks his campaign promises and betrays the working class, he raises questions about his integrity, but not his legitimacy. Losing an election to fake news and alternative facts is a failure of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign to communicate, not a failure of Trump’s legitimacy. The voter suppression techniques used by the Republican Party in North Carolina, Ohio, and other states are egregious, but the law is on the side of your right to vote, so keep seeking remedies in court and in the meantime, step up voter registration and turnout efforts to overcome the illegal obstacles. Russian interference in the election does not make Trump illegitimate, but if Trump and his campaign collaborated with the Russians, his presidency violates the Constitution.
No, when you call, write, or email your congressman and senators in opposition to an outrageous Trump policy – and you already have plenty of outrages from which to choose when you call, write, or email them today and every day until they hear you – it will not help to question the president’s legitimacy. No, while Trump’s illegitimacy is a fair rhetorical question, it is not particularly useful to your congressman and senators in discharging their duty to the Constitution.
If our Constitution is to save us, the right questions are the questions your congressman and senators are duty bound to answer and, if the findings so indicate, to remedy. As it pertains to the unique proclivities of the Trump presidency, the Constitution asks these three questions. Is the president a crook? Is the president a traitor? And, is the president crazy?
Even Richard Nixon, history’s greatest abuser of the powers of the office, said, “The American people have the right to know if their president is a crook.” Indeed, there was little evidence Nixon ever used the powers of his presidency for personal financial gain, but Trump was in flagrant violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause the day he took office. Instead of acting to ameliorate the violation, Trump acted further to ensure his personal financial gains by assigning his business assets to his children, instead of a blind trust that would have divested him of businesses posing a conflict of interest, just as his predecessors had done. Furthermore, for no apparent reason other than to conceal illegal gains or worse, Trump broke the promise to release his tax returns as his predecessors had released theirs. His own actions raised the legitimate Constitutional question, “Is Trump a crook?”
By breaking his promise to release his tax returns, thereby concealing his financial entanglements with and indebtedness to foreign governments including Russia, Trump not only raised the specter of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors, but treason as well. Amid the noise of the presidential campaign, reputable reports that a private computer server registered to the Trump organization and located in his Trump Tower campaign office had been communicating repeatedly, routinely, and exclusively with a server at Alpha Bank of Russia went relatively unnoticed at the time. No, the fact since established that Russia interfered with the election on behalf Trump for their own ends did not render his presidency illegitimate, but the senate found it reason enough to launch an investigation. If they find he collaborated with the Russians, Trump committed treason. His own words and actions related to Russia gave rise to the legitimate constitutional question, “Is Trump a traitor?”
Trump’s mental condition makes for great late night comedy material, but as Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, and King George III informed our founding fathers and Hitler and Pol Pot inform us since, history demonstrates that a ruler’s madness is often no laughing matter. Trump’s delusions about the size of anything that might boost his ego are “weird,” as conservative columnist Davis Brooks put it, but when compulsive narcissism rises to the level of sociopath, it threatens our national security and our freedom. To weaken NATO and destabilize Eastern Europe is crazy, if not the rational plan of a traitor. To make an enemy of the peaceful ally on our southern border and destabilize North America within one week of taking office is crazy. Indeed, to treat our allies as a hostile nations and Russia as a friendly one is insane, if not treasonous. If equating his relationship with Vladimir Putin to his relationship with Angela Merkel is not the calculated position of a traitor, it is sheer lunacy and an equal security threat. If Trump tries to “take Iraq’s oil” as threatened, he is criminally insane on the order of history’s most brutal authoritarian rulers.
Fortunately, in addition to Article II Section 4 of the Constitution, providing for impeachment of a president, Section 1 as clarified in the 25th Amendment enables Congress and even Trump’s own cabinet to declare him “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Trump’s rather obvious psychiatric issues raise a legitimate constitutional question, “Is Trump crazy?”
We are unaccustomed to asking such questions, thank God. We do not feel comfortable asking them, but to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, we must ask the right questions before it is too late.
Frank Wrinn
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Dear Mr. Wrinn,
I read your article here with great interest. I don't have an explanation for why I don't recall other articles that you have contributed. I did go back and read several that presented themselves in a simple search. This article ends with this statement, ".....we must ask the right questions before it is too late" [partial quote only of course].
What I have observed seems to be that the push back of protestors, many who admit that they did not even vote, has all been proverbially too little, too late. A lot of effort post haste. Where were these throngs of people during the debates and nominations for presidential candidates? Where
were they during the race for president? Moreover, where were they when Democrats got ousted by the hundreds during the Obama administration?
Perhaps we have seen the modern version of "The tortoise and the hare?" Democrats laid back, assured that Ms Clinton had the presidential race in hand. No rush becasue according to each and every pundit and paper and organization, Donald Trump had zero chance of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency.
When Ann Coulter stated that she thought that Trump would be the next POTUS, she was almost literally laughed out of the studio.The very mention of Trumps name in political conversation was drown in chuckles and head wagging accompanied by eye rolling and huge grins. However, every poll was wrong. Every pollster was embarrassed. The shock set in and it never really stopped.
Mr. Trump throws a bag of grenades into the arena, and when the the smoke clears, he picks up the pieces and negotiates his way to popularity [not my thought, but something I heard on a news program regarding his tactics]. You also stated that he had "no mandate". Video tape clearly shows that he was talking about trade inequities decades ago on a show with Oprah Winfrey. He has had a "mandate" for a very long time.His mandate was to tell America what people were starving to hear. Ms.Clinton unfortunately told America that she would deliver more of what we had lived with for eight years. But I digress.
Once again, ".....we must ask the right questions before it is too late". Sir, the train has left the station. Protestors and demonstrators are standing on the platform as smoke and fumes and dust
swirl around them. Meanwhile the caboose disappears from sight. At least Mr. Trump is not waving from the end of the last car, he is up in the engine throwing more wood on the fire.
If he fails and it is certainly a possibility, it won't be becasue the masses rose up after he won everything he was totally predicted to lose. It will be because he promised so much more than he could accomplish. On the other hand, haven't we always seen that pattern in our leaders?
Ted Ladd
Ooltewah