“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s gotta be,” Trump asserted at his Monday press conference
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images/2020 Getty Images Last Friday, President Trump used his daily press conference to proclaim that he would soon tell the country when he planned to open it back up. “I’m going to have to make a decision …” he said, portentously. “I would say, without question, it’s the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make.”
As a matter of law, Trump is wrong. State and local officials have legal authority to close businesses and public buildings in order to safeguard public health. As University of Texas law professor Bobby Chesney has pointed out, “No currently existing statute plausibly can be read to confer such an authority on the president.”
Why would Trump be disputing the law? The stupidest, and therefore most likely, explanation is that Trump is simply angry that cable news is discussing the fact that Trump’s “decision” is not actually his to make. Trump likes positioning himself as the protagonist of the Trump Show, and it will not do for the narrator to explain that the big reveal in tomorrow’s episode has been determined by some off-screen characters.
Trump genuinely does not grasp the distinction between his relationship to the federal government and his relationship to the Trump Organization. He believes he is entitled to the same measure of full control over both, with the complete personal loyalty of every employee thereof. “I have an Article 2,” as he has once put it, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
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