How ‘John Roberts created a monster’ with Trump: analysis

The chaos that characterizes President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House can be traced back to a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court last year, according to a new analysis from The American Prospect.In 2024, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, issued a ruling in Trump v. United States, a lawsuit attempting to combat the federal election tampering investigations against the then-former president. The Court found that presidents had absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for anything undertaken as an “official act” of the presidency. This was widely interpreted as effectively putting the president above the law.On Friday, American Prospect managing editor Ryan Cooper pinned Trump’s chaotic second-term governance on this ruling, accusing Roberts of “[creating] a monster” in Trump by effectively making him a king, leaving the U.S. to get “clubbed over the head with the reasons why monarchies are bad.”“Roberts turned the presidency into a kingship, and the first president to govern under this ruling has compressed a solid millennium or two of monarchical misrule into a mere ten months,” Cooper wrote.The piece outlined two immediate issues with monarchical rule visible under Trump. The first is that rulers with absolute immunity are more likely to abuse the power. This, Cooper argued, conflicts with Roberts’ Trump v. United States rationale that presidents constrained by fears of criminal prosecution might shy away from bold decisive leadership.“Roberts barely even considered the possibility that a president free from any worry about legal consequences might do horrible stuff, like, for instance, murdering random people,” Cooper wrote, referencing the recent boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea by the U.S., which the administration claimed with minimal evidence to be tied to drug trafficking.The second issue Cooper put forward is that king’s are liable to enact poor governance for a number of reasons, while remaining free from accountability. To make this point, he cited numerous aspects of Trump’s second term, including tariffs, unstable foreign policy and health concerns.“His trade war makes no sense whatsoever on its own terms, and his general behavior has been so erratic and alarming that America’s whole alliance system is melting down,” Cooper added. “Personally, Trump looks every day of his 79 years, is clearly ill with something, and often evinces no understanding of what his administration is doing, just like an aging king on his last legs. When Trump is cogent enough to understand what is happening, he commits one grotesque atrocity after the next, and when he is not, a bunch of scheming viziers elbow each other out of the way to commit their own.”Given that a corrupt king was a “current reality” for the framers of the U.S. Constitution, all of these issues were known to them, and they constructed American society to avoid. Now, Cooper argues, the main tool for removing unfit leaders, impeachment, “is a dead letter thanks to the utter corruption of the Republican Party.”

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