There’s No Coming Back From the Norm-Breaking at the RNC
How many Hatch Act violations can one gathering include? The Trump White House seems determined to find out.
Only minutes before the Republican National Convention began on Tuesday, one speaker was removed from the program for sharing a grotesquely anti-Semitic thread laced with conspiracy theories. That wasn’t the weird part.
Instead, if the second night of the RNC is remembered for anything, it will be the seeming joy with which legally enforceable norms of American politics were swept away.
President Donald Trump—who said just last year, “I have an Article Two, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president”—put his panoply of constitutional powers to work as television programming for a partisan political convention. First, Trump pardoned Jon Ponder, a convicted bank robber who found religion and started a nonprofit. Then, he participated in a naturalization ceremony of five immigrants with acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf. Both events were held in the White House.
