Dictator Before Day One: Trump’s Gambit to Break the System

Trump’s appointment of unqualified loyalists to key national security posts is designed to ravage obstacles to his exercise of absolute power. They need to be stopped.

There is much to be said about why Donald Trump was able to win a second term and how Democrats failed to prevent his return to power. But as much as I would like to participate in this debate, the far more immediate concern is how Trump is laying the groundwork to break the Constitution while the Democrats in opposition are licking their wounds and politicians of all stripes are reacting to the November 5 message from the electorate. Make no mistake, the appointments Trump has made to key national security posts are an intentional strategy to alter the constitutional system of divided and checked powers. The weary defenders of our democratic norms do not have the luxury to simply sit this one out and let these people seize the reins of power.

Under the usual circumstances, I would not be obsessing over presidential cabinet nominations. Indeed, I am a big believer that victorious presidents should have great leeway to place their chosen personnel into high office.

But these are no normal times.

With a normal president, we could feel assured that he would submit to both the formal restraints and unwritten norms our system places on the presidency. If the Senate rejects or fails to act on a nominee, normal presidents usually withdraw the nomination. Normal presidents insist that those who work for them meet the standards for obtaining a security clearance. They wouldn’t dream of appointing someone that have actively undermined American foreign policy. Normal presidents subject their appointees to FBI background checks to ensure these individuals are of good ethical character and deserve the honor that comes with high office. Normal presidents understand that the military should only be asked to quell domestic unrest in the most limited and extraordinary circumstances. They would not look to unleash military force on the citizenry as a means of intimidation or a symbol of raw power.

But in the mere two weeks since his election, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he has no intention of abiding by any of these traditional practices. He intends to exercise all the powers that the Constitution and federal law provide to their maximum extent, and he will resist, undermine, and attempt to destroy all the constraints on presidential power that our Constitution and historical norms impose on the presidency. We know he will do this because he has said he would. And now he is doing it before he has even taken the oath of office.

His appointments of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence, and Matt Gaetz as Attorney General are part and parcel of a strategy to substantially break key shackles on presidential power.

Think about it. If you were a president obsessed with gaining absolute power, what would you want to control the most?  Of course, first the military. Second, information. And third, the lawyers. Defense. Intelligence. Justice. Hegseth, Gabbard, Gaetz.

Now, the Constitution already makes the President the commander in chief of the armed forces so Trump will have broad authority over the military. But Trump fully understands from his first term that our professional and highly educated general officer corps is trained to both obey civilian authority, but also to refuse to obey illegal orders from the president. Trump’s greatest frustration in his first term was the resistance he received on national security matters from the professional military, who were often backed up by the Secretary of Defense. For example, when protestors flooded the streets of American cities in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, Trump pushed for 10,000 active duty military to be deployed under the Insurrection Act to quell the protests.  “Why can’t you just go out and shoot them in the legs?” Trump pressed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Both of them dissented, explaining that shooting protestors was an inappropriate use of the military.

But in Pete Hegseth, Trump has found a potential Secretary of Defense who will take his side when he wants to push the envelope and use the military for questionable, and perhaps illegal, purposes. Indeed, Hegseth caught Trump’s eye by being a fierce advocate on Fox News for soldiers who had been court martialed for war crimes and getting them exonerated over the objections of the general officer corps. Hegseth is never going to push back on Trump’s excesses. He will not represent the views of the professional military in the White House when he knows that his mercurial boss does not want to hear them. Hegseth will be Trump’s henchman to run roughshod over military ethics and ensure that any internal debate and dissent relating to our national security policy is snuffed.

The control of information is also an essential element of power. Information about security issues, which we call “intelligence,” is essential to aid presidents in making decisions. But intelligence can also be used to muster opposition to a presidents’ policies. The United States owns the most powerful, extensive foreign intelligence collection operation in human history. The only official (outside of the White House) that has authority to access any intelligence collected by one of the 18 members of the U.S. Intelligence Community is the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Enter Ms. Gabbard. She is an intense loyalist to Trump and will use her office to ensure that the information flowing from the intelligence community supports Trump’s version of the facts. Like Trump, Gabbard is a pro at constructing an alternative factual narrative about the world to suit Trump’s political purposes, as she has done for years in repeating Kremlin disinformation to undermine support for Ukraine. Discerning the truth is the guidepost of the Intelligence Community, but Trump knows that the truth is an obstacle to his exercise of absolute power. Placing Gabbard in the DNI role will make it far easier for Trump to execute his preferred policies unconstrained by inconvenient truths.

The appointment of Gaetz to Attorney General must also be recognized not only as an effort to place a loyalist in a key position of power, but also as a genuine attack on our constitutional system. After military force, the ability to prosecute violations of the law is the most important power the government exercises. Even a decision to open a criminal investigation and deploy the vast authorities of the FBI is a power that can dramatically influence policy and shape behavior throughout society. In a democracy based on the rule of law, the discretionary powers of the Attorney General must be exercised with careful restraint, according to principle, and without any political consideration. Gaetz is the absolute antithesis of someone who should be vested with these powers. He is excessively partisan, unprincipled, revels in breaking rules and norms, and of course has been investigated for criminal and ethical violations. The concept that presidents should play no role in the exercise of law enforcement is nowhere mentioned in our Constitution or laws. Trump and Gaetz will steamroller this critical norm, weaponize the use of the criminal law for political purposes and circumvent the law when it presents an obstacle to their desired course of action. 

Trump has also made clear that if these power-grab nominations are not approved by the Senate, he will demand that the Senate go into recess so he can use the constitutional power of recess appointments to put his chosen apparatchiks in power. While this is a power the framers unwisely gave to the President, it has rarely, if ever been exercised in this fashion. If Trump gets away with it, he will have claimed even more power by neutering the Senate’s power to confirm nominees to high-ranking executive branch posts. This will be just the opening salvo in an effort to wrest additional powers away from the Congress and aggrandize the powers of the presidency.

So, it has been only two weeks since Trump’s election, and already the scenario that many have been warning of since Trump rose from the ashes of January 6 to regain power is coming to pass. Our constitutional democracy was on the ballot in November and the American people unwisely chose its opponent. The system is now blinking red.

Those who care about maintaining our democracy – and the security and prosperity it has produced – must oppose Senate confirmation of these three nominations vigorously. And if they are rejected for confirmation, the Senate majority must be shamed into preventing their recess appointments.

Checking Trump’s power needs to start now.