Bolton book and Supreme Court ruling on ‘dreamers’ amount to twin defeats to Trump
President Trump walked to a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Tuesday. While other books by journalists, lower-level former aides, and even an anonymous senior official have revealed much about the Trump White House, former national security adviser John Bolton’s volume is the first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official. DOUG MILLS/NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — Addressing throngs of adoring fans last June, President Trump posited as undisputed fact that Article II of the Constitution gave him ‘‘the right to do whatever I want as president.’’
What a difference a year makes.
In a span of less than 24 hours this week, Trump twice had the whistle blown on his moves to bust through the boundaries of law — twin defeats that forced him to the political defensive at the very moment he is trying to generate momentum for his floundering reelection campaign.
The first whistle came in the form of John Bolton’s explosive memoir of his 17 months as Trump’s national security adviser, details of which were first reported Wednesday afternoon.
In his book, ‘‘The Room Where It Happened,’’ Bolton details how Trump solicited help with his 2020 reelection from Chinese President Xi Jinping, which is against the law. This is one of many damning anecdotes the adviser-turned-antagonist unspools to paint a portrait of Trump as a threat to the country and unfit to serve.
The second whistle came from the Supreme Court, which in a stunning ruling on Thursday morning blocked a signature Trump administration policy of ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides legal protections for undocumented immigrants known as ‘‘dreamers’’ who were brought to the country as children.
Even though Trump proudly shifted its ideological orientation to the right with his nominations of two conservative justices, the court provided no accommodation for the president. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who joined with the court’s four liberals, wrote in the majority opinion that the administration’s attempts to terminate DACA violated federal law and were ‘‘arbitrary and capricious.’’
Taken together, Bolton’s revelations coupled with the Supreme Court’s rejection of a Trump policy that had been a central campaign promise amount to a stinging rebuke of Trump’s use of executive power.
‘‘It’s part of a pattern of lawless activity,’’ Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview Thursday. ‘‘The firings of inspectors general, the breaking of norms, rules, laws, constitutional oaths, American values — it’s a persistent and pernicious theme of this administration.’’
Abuse of power was at the heart of House Democrats’ case to impeach Trump. Although Senate Republicans acquitted the president at trial, supporters of his impeachment said Thursday that he is getting his just deserts now, less than five months before the election.
‘‘It’s a good week for the rule of law and a bad week for people who think they’re above the rule of law,’’ said Joyce Vance, a former US attorney in the Obama administration. ‘‘Trump is finally being held accountable.’’
Trump used his familiar arsenal to mount his defense. In a series of late-night and early-morning tweets, he excoriated Bolton as a ‘‘wacko,’’ a ‘‘dope,’’ a ‘‘disgruntled boring fool,’’ and a ‘‘sick puppy.’’
As for the Supreme Court, Trump said the ‘‘horrible & politically charged decisions’’ of this week — presumably including Monday’s landmark ruling protecting gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination — were ‘‘shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives.’’
In a separate tweet, Trump asked, ‘‘Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?’’
The answer, according to former Nixon White House counsel John Dean III, is no.
‘‘Justices watch what’s going on in the world. They know we have an unstable leader. They see he’s not a force for stability in democracy,’’ said Dean, who famously testified against then-president Richard Nixon in the congressional Watergate inquiry.
Assessing the fallout of the court’s DACA ruling and Bolton’s memoir, Dean argued, ‘‘This is a blow against Trump that has existential implications for his presidency, but it’s of the time . . . Trump is becoming what he hates most, which is being a loser.’’
Trump’s polling deficit to former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has grown in recent weeks in national and battleground-state polls. Trump and his campaign team hope to begin reversing that trend on Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., where the president will return to the campaign trail to resume his mega-rallies that had been on pause because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Source:bostonglobe.com/news