Donald Trump is acting “like [Richard] Nixon” in office, according to a political analyst who says the president is “operating with illegal abandon”.
Columnist Matthew Purdy, writing in The New York Times, suggested the president is “power-hungry” and using all the tools at his disposal to walk back post-Watergate ethical rulings. Purdy argues that Trump is rolling back reforms which touched “all corners of the government” in the mid-1970s, reforms meant to “prevent a recurrence” of abuse of power.
But Trump has taken aim at the “ethical checkpoints” established post-Watergate and now looks to be acting “like Nixon”, according to Purdy.
He wrote, “From the opening days of his second term, President Trump took aim at Watergate’s ethical checkpoints as if in a shooting gallery… A strain of conservative legal thinking has been aiming to reassert the president’s powers ever since they were curbed in the post-Watergate era.”
“But while Mr. Trump’s lawyers successfully make the case for expanding presidential authority based on a high-minded Constitutional argument, there is a raw political result.”
“He has removed barriers that might slow his pursuit of a highly personal presidency — punishing opponents and rewarding allies and financial backers while also reaping profits for family businesses that intersect with his powers as president.”
Sweeping changes, including reliance on a Trump family-owned cryptocurrency and a list of pardons (one of which freed Binance founder, Changpeng Zhao), led to Purdy suggesting the Trump administration is veering towards “illegal abandon”.
He wrote, “The Trump administration has succinctly laid out the basis of the theory in briefs arguing that the president has the power to remove heads of independent agencies.”
“But even some Republicans who read the Constitution as envisioning a powerful executive say that Mr. Trump, under the cover of the unitary executive theory, is operating with illegal abandon.”
Purdy’s assessment has since been backed by Professor John Yoo, who believes the best case scenario is rolling back the reforms has Trump cemented as a “modern-day Andrew Jackson”.
But Professor Yoo, a Berkeley law professor, believes a darker alternative is much more likely. He said, “The bad story is that he turns out to be like Nixon.”
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