Trump’s animus toward the law extends to judges and courts, too. He has less control over their actions, so he uses his bully pulpit to demean them and to question their legitimacy. Recall during the 2016 campaign when candidate Trump disparaged a judge for a ruling related to a lawsuit against Trump University by claiming the judge’s Mexican heritage made him biased. At the time, CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted Trump. “I don’t care if you criticize him. That’s fine. You can criticize every decision. What I’m saying is, if you invoke his race as a reason why he can’t do his job—” “I think that’s why he’s doing it,” Trump interrupted, doubling down and insisting the judge should recuse himself. The judge, by the way, was not from Mexico, but Indiana. Paul Ryan called it “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
After a ruling against the administration’s immigration policies, President Trump blasted the court’s decision as “a disgrace” and attacked the presiding judge as “an Obama judge” and said the court on which the man served was “really something we have to take a look at because it’s not fair.” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated the president’s attack, writing that the United States does not have “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges… The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
The president didn’t let the comment slide. He went on a tweet storm, mocking the “independent judiciary” in quotations and suggesting the United States needed to break up the “complete & total disaster” Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in order to start getting more favorable rulings for the Trump administration. His comments were liked by more than 100,000 people. In another outburst, the president assailed a judge for an injunction on his travel ban. “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” He continued: “If something happens blame him and court system.” This is the real threat. Trump may have perverse views of his own about justice, but he is exhorting others to share the opinion that US courts are corrupt and potentially a public danger, further corroding a key pillar of our democracy.
The president has proposed doing away with judges on more than one occasion. Too many of his policies are getting stuck in legal limbo, he says.
“Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the fucking judges,” Trump fumed one morning. “There shouldn’t be any at all, really.” He went a step further and asked his legal team to draft up a bill and send it to Congress to reduce the number of federal judges.
Staff ignored the outburst and the wacky request.
Trump continued complaining anyway. “I’ve only won two cases in the courts as president. And you know what one of them was? A case against a stripper.”
Eyes widened at the reference. He would later repeat the comment, undoubtedly to get the same reaction from a new set of captive listeners.
The unavoidable conclusion is that the president sees himself as above the law, which is a scary point of view for a person who swears before God and the nation to “faithfully execute” it. The perception is evident by his almost mystical fascination with the power of the presidential pardon, which allows him to absolve convicted criminals of guilt. To Donald Trump, these are unlimited “Get Out of Jail Free” cards on a Monopoly board.
He has told officials that if they take illegal actions on his behalf, he will pardon them. Press outlets reported that the president once offered pardons for his wall-builders, urging them to ignore regulations standing in the way of his precious barrier and to plow ahead, regardless of the consequences. He’d have their backs, pardon in hand, if they got into legal trouble. Spokespeople were immediately dispatched to pour cold water on the reporting. Tellingly, they didn’t deny what the president said but insisted his comments were made in jest. Once again, for the record, that’s how you know Donald Trump is not joking—when he sends someone out to say that he was joking.
Trump has also claimed he can pardon himself, if needed. He tweeted in June 2018, “…I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” The comment eerily paralleled Nixon’s statement: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Ask yourself, are these the words of a man who’s planning to follow the law? In a sad way, it’s almost a relief when he makes these statements, because it allows the public to see what advisors are experiencing every day behind the curtain, without the president labeling it as “fake news” from anonymous sources.
Trump reserves a special place in his heart for our last category of the justice system: investigators. It’s essential in a democracy that those who investigate crimes be impartial, that their inquiries are not tainted by outside influence. Yet there is nothing that makes the president’s head explode like the prospect of being investigated, as America witnessed during Trump’s up-all-night, burn-it-down obsession with what he famously labeled “THE WITCH HUNT.” The Mueller Report revealed the lengths to which the president will go to interfere with the investigative process. Before you even dive into the text, the executive summary notes that his conduct involved “public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”
You could make the case that the Mueller ordeal wouldn’t have happened in the first place if the president had restrained himself from trying to influence the Russia probe. On May 9, 2017, the president fired FBI director Jim Comey. He sent the director a termination letter that said the attorney general and deputy attorney general had recommended to him that Comey be dismissed. “I have accepted their recommendation and you are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately,” the president wrote. “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.” He closed with: “I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”
It would be an understatement to say that people around him were both pissed off and spooked at what appeared to be Trump’s attempt to protect himself from being investigated. Here, Trump fanboys will throw up a red flag. “Come on,” they might say, “the president fired Comey because the man lost the public trust by grandstanding. Even Clinton was happy.” What those supporters didn’t see, though, was how fast the Washington, DC, switchboards melted down that afternoon, as the president’s advisors called one another with concerned speculation about his action. None of us really believed he was trying to “do what was right.”
Not long after, the president’s justification began to unravel. While he claimed he made the decision at the advice of the Justice Department’s two top officials, Trump’s own explanations in the ensuing days contradicted this. In an interview with NBC News, he cited the Russia probe as one of the reasons he had gotten rid of Comey. “I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’” he told the outlet. The same month in a meeting with Russian officials at the White House, the president confessed to them that dismissing Jim had relieved “great pressure.” It was soon revealed that the president had actually asked the Justice Department to draft the firing recommendation that was given to him, which they did reluctantly. It was all staged.
The president’s sudden firing of the FBI director—and then the shifting explanations—were seen within his own White House as a dangerous move that could set in motion a series of events the result of which might be the downfall of the administration. At least one cabinet member mulled resigning. “I’m genuinely worried for the country,” the official confessed, although apparently not worried enough to make the point publicly. Officials held their breath, and it only got grimmer.