You believed the Divine Rights of Kings doctrine was long dead. That’s correct – but it is staging a resurgence in the White House. Donald Trump’s statement in his inauguration speech was the signal, with Trump declaring “I was saved by God to make America great again”.
Trump claims to govern with divine instigation. He believes ”even more so now” that his escape from the assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania was inspired by God to allow Trump to fulfil his mission to “reclaim our republic”, thereby making the 2024 election the “most consequential” in US history. The biblical invocation is obvious. Trump, like Moses, comes with a divinely ordained mission – to lead the American people back to their manifest destiny – a mission in which “we will not forget our God” just as Moses honoured God’s command in leading the Israelites out of Egypt.
Accordingly, Trump declares January 20, 2025, to be “Liberation Day” for American citizens. It is liberation from a “radical and corrupt establishment” that “extracted power and wealth” from the people while “the pillars of our society lay broken”.
Trump claims to have been “tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history” – but Trump has come through to make America “greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before”.
He declares a rebirth. By invoking the Almighty, Trump locates himself in the most powerful idea that inspired the republic.
In George Washington’s 1789 inaugural he invoked the “divine blessing” that guided the new nation and declared the American people were bound to that “Great Author” where every step towards their independence “seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency”.
Trump’s second presidency rests upon the deepest origins of the presidential office. That great generation of American founding fathers, when they devised their constitution, were fixated by the British monarchy. While they denounced George 111, they created a presidency that combined the powers of both the head of state and head of government, and resembled an elective kingship.
From the start, the US president possessed a monarchical status – but the president, unlike the British monarch, was weaponised with real constitutional power. Benjamin Franklin said: “The executive will always be increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.” During the Civil War, Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, said: “We elect a king for four years and give him absolute power within certain limits, which after all he can interpret for himself.”
This is exactly what Trump intends to do. He embarks upon a grand experiment – commanding the executive branch, with a majority in congress, a conservative-inclined Supreme Court and, in an alliance with the hi-tech billionaires of the age, Trump will push the powers of the presidency to their limits and beyond.
We are about to witness an extraordinary real-time test of presidential power and whether it can be constrained by the political, judicial and constitutional system in the cause of democratic balance.
Trump began by rewriting the law for about 1500 people who invaded and rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He commuted prison sentences to time served for 14 people and offered blanket pardons for the rest. This included prominent leaders of radical groups such as the Proud Boys, whose leader had been sentenced to 22 years in prison. Hundreds were prosecuted for assaulting or resisting police.
For example, in the litany of individuals, Daniel Joseph “DJ” Rodriguez, sentenced to 151 months, is seen on video using an electroshock weapon against police by “plunging it into the officer’s neck”. The previous evening he pledged in a MAGA chat group: “There will be blood.” Many individuals attacked and sprayed the eyes of police, bashed them, and bragged about it.
Trump abandoned his previous claim to do “case-by-case” assessment. His vice president, JD Vance, had said: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Obviously – unless the President changes his mind and does whatever he likes. Trump exercised a constitutional power but his action was a direct assault on the US justice system.
That outgoing president Joe Biden had abused the same power with his pardons inevitably dilutes criticism of Trump but affords no justification for his actions. Trump’s actions invoke the divine powers vested in monarchs – the power to offer mercy or sentence enemies, deployed in ancient times to reward supporters, punish rivals and court populist approval. Sound familiar? Trump is playing a brutal political game. His message: if cops are bashed and criminal laws are broken in his good name, then the President as king has the power to forgive you.
Trump also changed his mind and wants to save TikTok, another example of the President deciding he will interpret the law to suit himself. Last year, in a bipartisan spirit, the House voted 360-58 and the Senate 79-18 to ban TikTok in America unless the China-based owner sold its stake within a year. TikTok is fighting the law, deploying its 170 million-strong users in the US – but the Supreme Court has just upheld the law. The US system and its intelligence agencies fear the US data held by Chinese owner ByteDance could be extracted on behalf of the Beijing government. Trump initially spearheaded efforts to ban TikTok, claiming it was a national security threat to America. But on returning to the White House, he has reinvented himself as TikTok’s saviour. Why?
Note that Trump used TikTok with immense success during the election. He has now issued an executive order seeking to suspend enforcement of the law while he seeks a solution that saves “a platform used by 170 million Americans”. In effect, he won’t enforce a law passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, with Trump now floating a “joint venture” deal where the US would have a 50 per cent stake.
Yet this is contrary to the law that says TikTok must sever all ties with ByteDance and China. The Wall Street Journal said: “Mr Trump is relaying that he puts pleasing China’s Xi Jinping above a law passed by congress.” It argued: “Congress is a co-equal branch of government, not a subsidiary of the president.” But it is doubtful that Trump accepts this.
The entire message of his first week is the overriding nature of his executive power. While the WSJ said Trump “can’t suspend laws like an English king before the 1689 Bill of Rights”, Trump clearly intends to circumvent or thwart the law, and is recruiting Big Tech, probably Elon Musk, to help him. “I have the right to make a deal,” Trump said. Implicitly, he is saying two things – he has superior power to congress and he can cut a deal with China.
The deluded pro-Trump commentators can’t see what is happening before their eyes – the new rules by which Trump will operate mean he will intimidate and bully smaller entities (Mexico, Panama, Denmark and hopeless Colombia) but attempt epic deal-making with the big boys (China and Russia) to reduce military conflict and its threat. His inauguration was a gobsmacking classic. It was old-fashioned manifest destiny and imperial expansion rolled together. The 19th century is alive and well, witness his honouring of president William McKinley, whom Trump applauds for his “expansion of territorial gains” for America – a reference to the 1898 Spanish-American War that saw Guam, Puerto Rico and The Philippines ceded to the US.
Trump’s world has left behind the Labor Party’s sad mantra of a “rules-based order.” His vision is the world of American territorial, trade and sphere of influence expansion – from Greenland to Panama. That’s why he looks forward to dealing with those other like-minded nationalistic imperialists, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, dealing with them in his mode: the President as king.
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