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Sensibilities change slowly over time, but the changes since the inauguration of Donald Trump as president have happened so quickly that after a little more than 500 days, America finds itself in a topsy-turvy world where our former allies are now being treated like the enemy and our former adversaries are pulling the puppet strings dangling from the arms of a president so cluelessly un-self-aware that he thinks that he’s the one in control.
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With all expectations of truth, integrity, and intelligence as characteristics necessary for the person sitting in the Oval Office now seemingly abandoned, and Trump himself chanting denials like an unholy rosary as he makes grander, increasingly authoritarian claims of presidential power, Trump crossed a new line today with his unprecedented claim that the Constitution grants him the power to pardon himself for any crimes he may commit.
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As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2018
When Atlantic Senior Editor David Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush and a thought leader of the few never-Trump Republicans left, saw Trump’s tweet, he immediately thought of Senator John McCain and the churlish comment that Donald Trump made about the Senator while he was on the campaign trail.
“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump at a campaign stop in Iowa. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Frum references the quote in his tweet about Trump’s newly declared self-pardoning power, with a tongue in cheek comeback that the ailing Senator would surely appreciate.
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Senator McCain's cue to reply, "I like the presidents who don't need pardons."
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 4, 2018
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That clever riposte was only the latest in several tweets that the Atlantic editor posted in response to Trump’s over-reaching authoritarian power grab. Earlier in the day he sent out these other damning assessments of Trump’s claims to be above the law:
About that self-pardon … https://t.co/ySsPURjOEG
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 4, 2018
Today, President Trump has made a claim of immunity from criminal wrongdoing – in office and out – more sweeping than anything dared by Richard Nixon. He's not just a Twitter troll, even if he acts like it. Time for hearings on this radical new claim of POTUS power to break law
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 4, 2018
Quite a number of people are comparing President Trump's claim of a right to self-pardon to George III. In fact, Trump is asserting a much much greater power than George III ever imagined – a power for which Charles I lost his head and James II lost his throne … more …
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 4, 2018
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This last tweet leads to long thread explaining the history of the powers that British royalty did and did not have culminating in this conclusion:
President Trump by contrast seeks to gain power to engage – himself – in very large-scale wrongdoing with legal impunity. He's trying to turn back the clock not to 1776, but to the early 17th century – to the prehistory of the Anglo-American parliamentary tradition.
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 4, 2018
It's that extreme – and that dangerous. – 30 –
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 4, 2018
Just a reminder, this is a conservative Republican saying these things. Unfortunately he’s not a congressional Republican, who in the end are the only ones that count now that the need for impeachment has only become more clear.
