In the gospel according to Donald Trump — his book “The Art of the Deal” — the future president laid out his business and life philosophy.
“I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after,” Trump wrote. “Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”
Once, Trump used this technique to haggle with contractors, to intimidate rival real estate sharks and in endless lawsuits to pursue his business interests.
Twenty-eight years later, he hasn’t changed. His pushing and pushing and pushing just takes place on a grander and more consequential stage.
How Trump beat a presidential curse
The president’s relentless attempts to create leverage and wield decisive and uninhibited power on multiple fronts have dominated a summer in which he’s been more unrestrained than ever.
August has often been a cruel month for presidents. In 2014, in an odd echo of today, fighting raged in Gaza and Ukraine, intruding on President Barack Obama’s vacation and raising questions about his leadership. Chroniclers of the Biden years date the start of the eclipse of the 46th president’s administration to August 26, 2021, when a suicide bomber killed 13 Americans at Kabul International Airport.
A member of the National Guard carries a firearm while patrolling the National Mall in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. – Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
Trump motored through this August determined to beat the curse, always testing the boundaries of what is appropriate legal or constitutional conduct in a president.
His pushing culminated this week with threats to federalize National Guard troops and send them to Chicago — even when Democratic leaders of the city and the state of Illinois told him to stay away.
Emergency conditions prescribed by the US Code that include rebellions, which might make this a clear legal act, do not exist in the city — despite Trump’s claims Tuesday that it’s in “big trouble” and is a “disaster” because of crime.
But that’s not stopping the president, who is also threatening to send federal forces to other cities controlled by Democrats.
“I (have) the right to do anything that I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
This is consistent with the president’s long-held view that there are few constraints on a president and that his authority is almost absolute.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, however, seemed on solid ground when he wrote on X. “No, Donald, you can’t do whatever you want.”
Time will tell.
Trump’s bid to fire Fed member is one of his biggest power plays yet
Trump is pushing his authority on another front, announcing this week he had fired Federal Reserve official Lisa Cook. The Department of Justice is investigating Cook over alleged mortgage transgressions. She has denied wrongdoing and plans to fight her dismissal in the courts.
It’s not clear whether Trump has the power to fire Cook. But he’s trying it anyway — aiming high and seeing if he can get what he wants.
Lisa Cook testifies during a Senate Banking nominations hearing on June 21, 2023, in Washington, DC. – Drew Angerer/Getty Images/File
“Under the law the president clearly does have the legal authority to fire a member of the Federal Reserve for cause. I think what is a closer question though is whether, the president has at this point what amounts to cause,” Tom Dupree, a former deputy assistant attorney general told CNN.
Trump rarely hides his motives. He said Tuesday that if he could dispense with Cook, he was more likely to get a favorable decision on one of his obsessions — big interest rate cuts.
“We’ll have a majority very shortly, so that’ll be great,” Trump said. “Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing and it’s going to be great. People are paying too high an interest rate.”
Trump shrugged his shoulders on Tuesday when asked by a reporter about the possibility that Cook could prevail in court. “You always have legal fights. Look, I had a legal fight that went on for years with crooked people, with very horrible people,” the president said.
Even if Cook’s fate remains in limbo because of the court fight, the president can achieve some of his goals. By attacking one Fed board member, he’s imposing indirect pressure on his premier target, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. And he can make life unpleasant for Cook, whom he regards as an adversary who has crossed him.
How Trump exploits legal delays to chase political goals
Trump is no stranger to using the time it takes for cases to work through the courts to advance his political goals.
For example, by the time dismissed bureaucrats working for USAID were able to legally challenge him, Trump had eviscerated their agency.
And as he fought four criminal indictments as a presidential candidate, he filed countless and often frivolous procedural motions to slow court action and run out the accountability clock over his attempt to steal the 2020 election.
Now that he’s back in power, his administration is using the legal system to settle scores.
Several of Trump’s political enemies have found themselves under investigation over mortgage filings, including California Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud judgment against Trump, his adult sons and the Trump organization. Neither has been charged, and both deny wrongdoing.
FBI members walk outside the home of the former White House national security adviser John Bolton in Bethesda, Maryland on August 22. – Tasos Katopodis/Reuters
Last week, FBI agents arrived at the home of John Bolton, a first-term Trump national security adviser who frequently criticizes the president on television. A search warrant would have been approved by a judge on the grounds that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed. But it did seem rather a coincidence that yet another Trump adversary was under investigation.
“What the president is trying to do here is very systemic and systematic,” Schiff told NBC’s “Meet the Press” regarding the search of Bolton’s home. “Anyone who stands up to the president, anyone who criticizes the president, anyone who says anything adverse to the president’s interests, gets the full weight of the federal government brought down on them.”
But who is to stop Trump?
The courts have curtailed some of his policies, although the increasing ranks of judges appointed by the president — and a conservative Supreme Court majority that sometimes rules in his favor — are helping his bid to expand presidential power. And the high court fueled Trump’s vision of impunity by ruling in a case related to one of his criminal indictments that presidents have substantial immunity for official acts.
Congress ought to be another brake. But Republican majorities in the House and Senate are supine to Trump, willingly ceding power to the executive. And the ultimate constitutional curb on his behavior — impeachment — was carried out twice by Democratic House majorities but was thwarted when Republicans in the Senate refused to convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors.
And forget anyone in Trump’s handpicked second-term team of uber-loyalists imposing restraint. In a more-than-three-hour Cabinet meeting Tuesday, his subordinates took turns to layer extravagant praise on the president.
Trump’s sense of his own omnipotence, impunity, vengeance and ambition grows by the day.
“Any person who defies him is viewed not as an intellectual adversary but as a vicious opponent,” Ty Cobb, who served for a time as a White House lawyer in Trump’s first term, told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “Anything that he can do to wreak vengeance, obviously, makes him very happy, just like expanding his power, makes him very happy.”
Cobb added, “I think this is something that Americans need to look at seriously because this cannot be what people in the country voted for in terms of honor, virtue and the rule of law.”
But nothing will stop Trump aiming very high — and pushing and pushing and pushing.
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