Trump Wants To Be Napoleon

And he thinks nothing can stop him

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”

– Donald Trump, February 15, 2025

With a ten-word social media post, Donald Trump has explained the sweeping power grab he has pursued since taking office about a month ago. To put it bluntly; he believes that as President of the United States, he can do anything and escape accountability by claiming he’s acting to save the nation.

Trump’s declaration explains why he felt he could simply ignore the law and fire roughly 17 independent government watchdogs (called inspectors general).

It explains why he believes he can summarily close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency created by Congress.

It explains why he ordered the ongoing federal corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped. (At least seven high-level prosecutors have resigned over this move.)

And it explains why he is, without cause, firing tens of thousands of federal workers.

All of Trump’s actions will be fought in court. However, he seems confident he’ll prevail. This is because he has packed the Supreme Court with his nominees, building a majority, which he believes supports an obscure philosophy of government called “the unitary executive.”

Under the unitary executive theory, a president has the authority to hire and fire anyone who works for the executive branch of the government (there are currently about 2 million of them). Backers of this theory also believe that Congress cannot create independent agencies. As he follows this idea, Trump is tipping the balance of power toward himself. And the Republicans who run the House and Senate aren’t even uttering a peep of opposition.

I would bet real money on the notion that Trump couldn’t explain the unitary executive idea, but this doesn’t matter, what he wants is more power. In part, this is because he’s always been a power-mad creature. However, he has another motivation -- The frustration he experienced as he tried and failed to act fast, and unilaterally, in his first term, which ran from 2017 to 2021.

In Trump’s imagination, he was thwarted not by his obvious incompetence but by a secret and massive cabal of federal employees (the Deep State) who consider themselves to be the true government. Those who believe in the Deep State say this group follows some nebulous plan to keep all power for themselves.

The firing campaign is just one part of Trump’s effort against the imaginary cabal. The second part will involve replacing some with appointees from a handpicked list of political operatives and loyalists. This part also calls for all federal workers to commit themselves not to the Constitution but to the administration, in other words, Trump himself. Thus, experts in vaccines, for example, could be required to declare them ineffective, whether or not the science supports this idea.

We must note that a substantial number of those being fired are, like the scientists, experts in their fields. They have been hired, precisely because they are not political hacks. This process of professionalizing the government workforce represents an effort, instituted over the last century, to give the government true professionals AND to limit how many people a president can hire for political reasons.

As he took office, Trump was ready to reverse the trend, which is one reason why he fired so many workers so quickly. The extremist Heritage Foundation has compiled a database of the names of 50,000 pro-Trump, so the president has a ready-made cadre of people to install in federal jobs. They can be expected to move quickly, fulfilling his directives.

It’s so early in the game that the public has not felt the impact of Trump’s actions. However, eventually, people will discover that fewer federal workers will mean slower services (the IRS won’t process tax refunds so quickly). In the meantime, Trump is going to act as if “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”.

Oh, did I tell you, his post was borrowed word for word from Napoleon?