At 8:04 PM on Thursday evening, Donald Trump drew a bright line in the sand. “I have an absolute right,” tweeted Trump, ”Perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, corruption, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!” That blanket declaration covers not just the weeks Trump’s team in Europe spent trying to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden in exchange for military aid, but Trump’s outreach to the U.K. and Australia in an effort to undercut his own intelligence agencies. It even provides cover for Trump’s South Lawn declaration that he was soliciting China’s efforts to help him take out Joe Biden. After all, China has some real insight into crushing political opposition.
Trump’s “absolute right” would allow him to do absolute wrong and face no consequence. And anyone who agrees with it is agreeing that neither democracy nor law has any meaning beyond that which Trump allows.
And it seems more than a bit odd, in a White House riddled with scandal where multiple members of the team past and present have been convicted of felonies, the only “corruption” that Trump can find to investigate concerns the candidate he viewed as his most likely opponent in 2020, and the candidate he faced in 2016.
This is far from the first time Trump has illuminated his divine rights. In previous tweets he has declared an “absolute right” to close America’s borders. And “absolute right” to share whatever he wants with Russia. And an “absolute right” to do whatever he wants with the Department of Justice. And, of course, an “absolute right” to pardon himself for all wrongdoings.
Trump has now claimed for himself rights that don’t just go beyond the Constitution, they roll back the Magna Carta. If he ever gets around to actually having that “infrastructure week,” perhaps he’ll explain how America doesn’t need new bridges, it needs a pyramid.