I can’t avoid it this time: the episode comes too close on the metaphorical heels of Curmie’s examination of biased and misleading reporting (here and here) and the post about the desperate AUC (the Axis of Unethical Conduct) settling on declaring Trump an American Hitler as its best shot at keeping him out of the White House if they fail at “locking him up.”
What happened next was so similar to what was described in my post that it’s almost comical. In an Iowa town hall with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump was asked about the current scare-mongering narrative that he was going to be a dictator. Trump, who apparently can’t stop himself from trolling, said,
“He says, you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said no, no, no — other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling (for oil). After that I’m not a dictator.”
And how was that quote relayed on multiple outlets? “Trump says he’ll be a dictator from Day One.” See? He admits it! Aaron Rupar, the same shameless hack I mentioned in the earlier post, tweeted, “Trump admits he plans to do some dictatorial things on “day one” of his second term.” Rupar’s a dishonest asshole, but he’s not stupid. He knows that what Trump was describing isn’t “dictatorial,” but he exploited, as usual, Trump’s inflammatory language.
The executive branch has statutory power to close borders under certain circumstances. If Trump used that power, it wouldn’t be “dictatorial,” it would be legal and backed by democratically- determined laws. If the President doesn’t have statutory power to do something, he can’t do it. As for “drilling”: all Trump can do is lift Biden’s executive orders blocking drilling. The measures he’d be eliminating were no less “dictatorial” than his orders cancelling them. The President can’t order private companies to drill (or else what, shoot the executives?). So once againTrump was being careless in his rhetoric, thus throwing raw meat for his foes in the media and the Trump-Deranged to freak out over. And, of course, they took the bait.
Trump enjoys doing this, even though it fuels the hysterical and biased coverage of everything he says or does, even though it increases political divisions in our society. He’s having fun giving the news media what it wants, and they have no scruples or restraint either. The rest of the country are victims.
We have almost a year of this to go. Isn’t that great?
Ethics Alarms 
What do you think their realistic chances of locking him up are?
Before the election? Zero. If he wins the election, he can pardon himself, and I see no reason why he wouldn’t. So the odds on him being locked up are the odds on Trump beating Biden
I dunno, I think they might be determined to see if they can lock him up before the election so he can’t run. Difficult? Yes. Impossible, probably not. If that happens, though, this nation is probably on its way out.
Do not forget this.
this started with the prosecution of Rick Perry.
He can pardon himself on the federal charges, but the Georgia ones are state level, and my understanding is that presidential pardon power does not apply to state charges.
He’d need to rely on the governor of Georgia, who is to be sure a Republican, but not someone whom Trump has gone out of his way to curry favor with.
The other question is, if someone else is nominated by the Republicans and wins, will that person pardon Trump? I think that would be a good idea — similar reasoning as with Ford.
Governors and public health officials acted like dictators for two years.
Did these people object?
Well, when Trump tried to repeal Obama’s executive order that treated the failed DACA as a law even though it didn’t pass Congress, the courts blocked Trump. It didn’t matter that the executive order was probably illegal, a single federal judge ruled that it might be bad for Hawaii tourism and blocked it. Only Presidents can repeal executive orders and the government did not recognize Trump as President.
If you refuse to recognize Trump as President, it is dictatorial any time he exercises presidential powers.
Another thing that would-be dictator did was appoint three SCOTUS judges who’ve been instrumental in rolling back the administrative state and upholding the Constitution. He’s the strangest sort of totalitarian.
And that’s another thing riding on this election…another possible vacancy (Thomas is 75, Alito 73).
Only one year of this to go?
Based on the direction of polling, Trump will be elected in a year and that guarantees five years of endless “The sky is falling! The walls are closing in! Climate change will now cook is all! Can you believe this racist Tweet?”
I stand corrected.
There is some value in Trump’s rhetoric. I even believe it is purposeful. I cannot believe that journalists were objective and professional prior to Trump if that were the case why was Fox News created.
These episodes allow evidence of bias to be right in front of the public. There is no doubt that these events will be ignored by those that hate Trump but I have faith there are more reasonable Americans among the electorate who will evaluate the media reasonably objectively.
The apt saying is you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all the people all of the time.