 "US president Donald Trump. Reuters file")
US President Donald Trump stirred yet another controversy after he made a post in which he quoted Napoleon Bonaparte by way of Rod Steiger on Saturday afternoon. Trump made the post shortly after he issued a plethora of executive actions and threats against several federal agencies.
Most of these orders are now being challenged in court raising fears that his administration might not pay heed to the court order and ignite a constitutional crisis in the United States. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” the president wrote on Truth Social and X. Earlier this week, the president’s efforts to cut federal funding, fire thousands of aid workers and unilaterally redefine the 14th Amendment were blocked in federal courts across the country.
It is pertinent to note that the quote Trump mentioned in the post was used by Napoleon when he attempted to justify his despotic regime as the will of the people of France. Interestingly, the quote actually came from the 1970 film Waterloo, in which Steiger’s Napoleon states that he “did not ‘usurp’ the crown.”
Trump administration steamrolls on all checks and balances
Within the first month in office, Trump’s team has baselessly boasted about the President’s supreme authority, frequently insisting that he is free from checks and balances. As the lawsuits against his orders continue to pour in, ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk and other members of the Trump administration have smeared the judges who have ruled against them as “corrupt” and “evil” and threatened to impeach and remove them from the bench.
Their comments have often raised alarm among constitutional scholars and legal analysts for an impending constitutional crisis. Amid the chaos, The New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie called Trump’s latest statement “the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.”
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“We’re getting into real Führerprinzip territory here,” said conservative Trump critic Bill Kristol. Many also raised concerns about the Trump administration’s crackdown on media. This week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the “media” of “fear-mongering” about an impending constitutional crisis. “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch where district court judges in liberal districts are abusing their power,” she told reporters on Wednesday, putting the complete blame on the Judicial branch of the government.
She went on to falsely claim that court-ordered injunctions against the administration have “no basis in the law.” “We will comply with these orders but it is also the administration’s position that we will ultimately be vindicated,” she furthered.
With inputs from agencies.