Member-only story
Trump Believes the Law Itself Is Corruption
Rules are for the weak and hold back strong men like himself
As a kid, I used to wonder if civilization is really just the process by which older, weaker people prevent younger, stronger ones from taking over. By the time the younger ones figure it all out, they’re old enough to need the protection of civilization’s rules themselves.
This is not too far from the way President Donald Trump sees the legal system: Laws are the enemy of the effective CEO and benevolent dictator alike. They are the limits through which the lazy and inferior hold back the great. In this sense, laws are a corruption of the natural order where the strong survive by leveraging their evolutionary advantages over the weak.
For Trump, the law is corruption.
It’s not the same sort of corruption as taking bribes. It’s a more essential violation of a leader’s strength and unfettered ability to do whatever he wants in the moment, such as extorting Ukraine to investigate the Bidens in return for military aid or ordering special counsel Robert Mueller to be fired (and to cover up the reason why) for merely investigating him. Or repeatedly flouting immigration law to scare Central Americans from immigrating to the U.S. or locking their kids in detention camps. None of that could get done…
