Three months ago, when “No Kings” demonstrations were spreading across the country, President Donald Trump insisted he was no monarch.
“I’m not a king,” he told reporters on Air Force One, when asked about the coast-to-coast protests. “I’m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great, that’s all it is. I’m not a king at all.”
But in a remarkably candid, two-hour interview with what he likes to call “the failing New York Times,” Trump described an expansive view of his powers as president, especially regarding foreign affairs.
“Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?” asked New York Times reporter Katie Rogers.
“Yeah, there is one thing,” Trump replied. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“Not international law?” interjected another New York Times reporter.
“I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.”
Trump was talking about the conduct of foreign policy, including, in his view, the complete authority he has as commander in chief of the armed forces to order U.S. troops into harm’s way without consulting Congress — if, in his judgment, it’s necessary to protect the nation.
“I’d like to take that same question and apply it here in the U.S.,” Tony Dokoupil, the new anchor of the CBS Evening News, said when he interviewed Trump a week later. “Is there anything that limits your power, your movement, your action here other than your own morality?”
“Well, I talk about morality. I’m a moral person. I don’t like seeing death. I don’t like seeing our people hurt,” Trump replied. “So yeah, it’s limited by my morality. And I have a very high grade of morality, so therefore it’s limited.”
“Not the Constitution, not the courts? That’s what I thought you were going to say,” Dokoupil said.
“Well, the Constitution, of course. That goes without saying,” Trump replied, but quickly added, “We’ll never get to the courts, we’ll never get to the Constitution, because I want to see what’s good for our country.”
Unlike his first, nonconsecutive term, when Trump was figuring out what he could and couldn’t do while listening to advisers who cautioned restraint, Trump 2.0, as the pundits call it, has seen the raw exercise of power where Trump pretty much does what he wants, when he wants.
Whether it’s firing thousands of federal workers, ending humanitarian aid authorized by Congress, spending money that hasn’t been appropriated to refurbish a gift luxury airliner for a nicer Air Force One, renaming buildings for himself, or even tearing down one-third of the White House to build a massive ballroom, Trump seeks neither permission before nor forgiveness after.
And it’s earned him some grudging respect.
“Donald Trump just demolishes the East Wing of the White House, right?” Fareed Zakaria, a frequent Trump critic, said on The Ezra Klein Show in November. “I have to say, when I look at that aesthetically, I was appalled, but I kind of was a bit jealous that, like, you know, he just gets stuff done, whatever he wants.”
When there are officials who get in Trump’s way, he fires them, or in the case of elected officials, threatens to gin up a primary opponent to unseat them.
When there are legal roadblocks, Trump figures out a way around them, such as declaring urban crime a national emergency so he can federalize U.S. troops, or illegal immigration as an “invasion” to facilitate deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
To avoid notifying Congress ahead of time, the Trump administration declared the massive use of U.S. military force — 150 aircraft, 200 troops — to capture former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro a law enforcement operation instead of a military raid.
In his New York Times interview, Trump explained why he’s intent on taking Greenland away from Denmark even though, under a 1951 treaty, the United States can station as many troops there as it wants.
“I want to do it properly,” Trump said, drawing on his experience as a developer, “To me, it’s ownership.”
“Ownership is very important,” Trump told the New York Times’s David Sanger. “That’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty.”
Squeezing Denmark — a founding member of NATO, which has fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq — into turning over Greenland and its 57,000 residents is an unprecedented power play, which could weaken, if not end, the NATO alliance.
“What he’s essentially saying is, the U.S. holds all the cards, has all the power. And NATO is not going to have a choice, because there is no NATO without the United States,” Sanger said later on a New York Times podcast. “And therefore, if the price of keeping the alliance together is handing the U.S. the right to control Greenland, they’re going to do it, because they don’t have another choice.”
Trump has never been a fan of NATO, which he has historically viewed as the U.S. protecting at great expense a group of freeloaders.
“A lot of people don’t think NATO is to our benefit,” Trump said. It’s thousands of miles away. We have a big ocean in between us. We’re helping Europe.”
Asked if it came down to obtaining Greenland or preserving NATO, which way would go, Trump said, “I don’t want to say that to you, but it may be a choice … You have to understand. Russia is not at all concerned with NATO other than us.”
“I was left thinking that the president feels himself unconstrained by law, convention, or the systems that the United States itself built at the end of World War II,” Sanger said. “But at the same time, that he’s not a warmonger, right? He actually does want that [Nobel] Peace Prize. He does want to be known as a president of peace.”
Democrats in Congress argue that Trump’s recent muscular use of military force, in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, and Yemen, flies in the face of his campaign pledge to keep America out of endless wars.
But Sanger points out that when Trump does resort to military force, the engagements tend to be short and decisive: “When he’s given the choice between long, slow, boring diplomacy and quick action by Special Operations breaking down doors, he’ll go for the special operators.”
There is a bipartisan effort in Congress at the moment to try to claw back some of the power ceded to the executive branch during Trump’s first year back in office.
A War Powers Resolution that would have restricted Trump’s ability to conduct future military operations in Venezuela without prior authorization from Congress failed by a single vote. Meanwhile, a pair of House and Senate bills would ban the use of any funds to invade a NATO member state or NATO-protected territory.
Trump, though, would likely veto those measures if they passed. And if a War Powers Resolution ever passed with a veto-proof majority, Trump could, and likely would, appeal its constitutionality to the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has shown him great deference in the past on matters of national security.
“Trump is feeling emboldened,” says Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. “He bombed Iran, and nobody stopped him. He took Maduro, and nobody stopped him. I think he is feeling emboldened in a way that is a fundamental threat to the rule of law in our Constitution.”
“He could send 500 Marines into Greenland and take it over — he shouldn’t for a thousand different reasons, but he could — and as emboldened as he is feeling, what is the check on him right now?” Smith said on CNN. “The Republicans in Congress have walked away from their responsibility to uphold the rights and responsibilities of our Congress. They’ve given President Trump carte blanche on everything.”
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Viewers got a sense of Trump’s confidence, bordering on cockiness, the morning after the Maduro raid, when he phoned into Fox & Friends and gushed about the unparalleled might of the U.S. military.
“There’s nobody that has the capability that we have,” the president boasted. “We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us.”
Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on national security.
