Trump’s ‘Law and Order’ is a Code for Maintaining Personal Power

It’s laughable, really, that President Trump is presenting himself as the candidate of “law and order” in the 2020 presidential campaign. His record in office has been one of illegality and disorder.

Trump’s presidency has been a sustained attack on our traditional conception of the rule of law in America. He has sought increasingly to govern by executive mandate — on immigration, foreign policy, health care, and environmental and economic policy. He defies Congress and the courts almost on a weekly basis.

Trump’s contempt for the law was obvious in his granting of clemency last week to his campaign crony Roger Stone. The best summary came from Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who just eight years ago was the presidential nominee of a Republican Party that hadn’t surrendered its values: “Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”

And yet Trump postures as the tough guy who will protect the nation. Since the beginning of June, he has tweeted or retweeted the phrase “law and order” 33 times, often just the three words, in capital letters, with an exclamation point. Democrats sometimes make it easy for him by pushing slogans such as “Defund the Police” or “Abolish ICE” that Trump then uses to play on public fears.