Trump's Imperial Ambitions

How Donald Trump Surpasses Nixon in Abuse of Power

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Donald Trump was a young man when President Richard Nixon, plagued by the Watergate scandal, resigned before he could be impeached, convicted, and removed from office for his criminal abuse of power. What lesson did Trump take from this tragedy? That Nixon should never have quit.

Five decades after Watergate became synonymous with the abuse of power, Trump is now surpassing Nixon in his pursuit of an imperial presidency. Most recently, he took it upon himself to fire fifteen federal inspectors general. A White House official described the move as the result of “changing priorities.” The truth, however, is that Trump is power-hungry and appears to believe that nothing—not even the law—can stop him.

The inspectors general, or IGs, as they are known, don’t set policy or carry it out. Instead, they serve as watchdogs within various departments and agencies, ranging from the State Department to the Veterans Administration. They generally labor in obscurity, responding to complaints that rarely receive public attention. But occasionally, they issue reports documenting serious waste, fraud, and abuse of power. These reports can have real impact. For example, the inspector general at the VA recently identified dangerous deficiencies in a health records system under development, leading to the project’s suspension. As insiders with the ability to report issues to the outside world, IGs hold a unique and important role—and therefore enjoy special legal protections. For this reason, Congress requires presidents to provide a thirty-day notice and a “substantive rationale” before firing an IG. This law represents a small but significant measure of accountability, designed to prevent exactly the kind of sudden firings Trump executed.

Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who recently founded a bipartisan caucus to support the IGs, offered the mildest response imaginable, saying, “There may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that, if so. I’d like further explanation from President Trump.” Senator Susan Collins of Maine, often portrayed as an independent-minded Republican, said only that she didn’t “understand” the firings. That’s it. She didn’t understand.

What’s not to understand? Trump acted because he could—and because he believed he could get away with it. In this way, the IG purge aligns with Trump’s unconstitutional claim that the 14th Amendment does not confer citizenship on all children born in the U.S. The courts have long regarded birthright citizenship as a settled issue. Trump, however, views himself as a law unto himself and simply doesn’t care.

In yet another display of power-seeking, Trump has repeatedly suggested that the U.S. should seize the Panama Canal and somehow acquire the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland. In threatening tiny Panama and even tinier Greenland, Trump would be violating established international norms. This, too, seems irrelevant to him. He may act simply because he believes he can.

By firing the IGs, attempting to void the 14th Amendment, and menacing two friendly neighbors, Trump has surpassed all modern predecessors in terms of audacity and recklessness. He may eventually be thwarted, but in the meantime, he’s proving one thing: he’s not another Nixon. He’s worse.