President Donald Trump is on the cusp of completing the first 100 days of his second presidency, and things are feeling a little more lawless than the first time around. The initial months of the second Trump presidency have been marked by his administration’s attempts to force their agenda down to the gullet of the country, even if it means breaking the core founding principles of the nation in the process.
On Friday, Time magazine published an interview with Trump discussing his first 100 days, and the president wasn’t convinced that the United States was a country run by laws, not by men.
Time Senior Political Correspondent Eric Cortellessa and Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs asked the president — who has redecorated the Oval Office to align with the gaudy gold-plated trappings of his golf clubs and penthouses — about a portrait he added of John Adams.
Adams once “we’re a government ruled by laws, not by men,” the interviewers asked. “Do you agree with that?”
Trump — who initially couldn’t even remember where the painting was — wasn’t so sure.
“We’re a government ruled by laws, not by men? Well, I think we’re a government ruled by law, but you know, somebody has to administer the law,” he responded. “So therefore men, certainly, men and women, certainly play a role in it. I wouldn’t agree with it 100 percent. We are a government where men are involved in the process of law, and ideally, you’re going to have honest men like me.”
Honest men like Trump — who are already exploring ways to bend laws to their benefit. Earlier in the interview, Trump teased to Time that while he didn’t know anything about the possibility of serving a third term, people were begging him to and he knew of options to make it happen. “There are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known. But I don’t believe in loopholes. I don’t believe in using loopholes,” Trump claimed, adding that he’s being “inundated with requests” to serve a third term.
But if Trump wants to claim that he doesn’t believe in the exploitation of loopholes, the evidence is stacked against him. Particularly on matters of immigration. The president and his advisers have gone to great pains to reinterpret centuries-old wartime powers like the Alien Enemies Act to conduct mass deportations without due process for migrants, dumped hundreds of men in brutal prisons in El Salvador without trial or conviction, and defied the federal courts at every turn.
When asked about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, and whose return to the United States the Trump administration was ordered to “facilitate” by the Supreme Court — the president didn’t want to talk about it. He told Time that he wasn’t in charge of complying with the court’s orders or making the decision to secure Abrego Garcia’s return. “I leave that to my lawyers,” he said.
When pressed, the president added that he hadn’t requested that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele return Abrego Garcia because Bukele had “said he wouldn’t,” and repeated spurious accusations that Abrego Garcia was a violent gang member belonging to MS-13.
Trump then stated that he was still open to the possibility of deporting American citizens to foreign prisons. “I would love to do that if it were permissible by law. We’re looking into that. When I have a person, these would be extreme cases,” he said. “If you ask me whether or not I would do that, I would, but totally, and I think you have to leave this part of the sentence totally subject to it being allowed under law.”
Donald Trump occupies the most powerful political office in the country, and the world. While John Adams may have said that the United States is a land of laws, it may only take the work and will of one man to dismantle them.
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