Donald Trump and the king who could do no wrong, but lost his head

Donald Trump offers little indication he has read history — or anything else worthwhile, really.

If he had, he might have come across the story of King Charles I, who was a big fan of the doctrine known as the divine right of kings.

Charles I ruled as king of England, Scotland and Ireland in the 17th century, believing he should answer to no earthly authority.

Donald Trump has plenty to smile about after the US Supreme Court this week cleared most of the legal hurdles he faced during his election campaign this year.Credit: nna\miriah.davis

Unsurprisingly, such massive arrogance made him increasingly unpopular with a dangerously broad variety of his subjects.

He ended up fighting the armies of both the English and Scottish parliaments in the First English Civil War. He was taken prisoner and handed over to the English parliament, where he spurned demands to embrace a constitutional monarchy.

He was tried for treason.

He refused to plead, declaring the trial was illegal because “no learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the king”.

“One of their maxims is the king can do no wrong,” insisted the king.

Oh, really?

The court judged Charles to be “a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy of the good people of the nation”, and found him guilty of having “traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present parliament and the people therein represented”.

Ten days after the trial began, Charles discovered he did not have the sovereign immunity he believed was his by right.

He lost his head on the chopping block outside the Banqueting House of the Palace of Whitehall on January 30, 1649.

Charles I by Anthony Van Dyck

Washington, DC, of course, and, for that matter, the buffet hall at Mar-a-Lago in Florida are far distant from London; 2024 is a long stretch from 1649, and the chopping block was retired some time ago.

Still, Charles I and the divine right of kings came to mind when the six Conservative judges of the US Supreme Court used their superior numbers to declare a former president cannot be prosecuted for official acts taken during his term in office.

It was almost as if the Supreme Court’s majority had taken notes from those hysterical evangelicals who proudly and unfathomably wear the slogan “Jesus is our saviour and Trump is our President”.

‘In its purest form, the concept of immunity boils down to a maxim - “the king can do no wrong”...’

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

America may have put to flight the Kingdom of Great Britain in the 1770s, replacing a king with a president, but here in 2024 the court was bestowing upon a former president a version of the old claimed maxim that “a king can do no wrong”.

It seemed a distance from the opening words of the second paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

The three dissenting judges of the Supreme Court were mightily unimpressed with the majority ruling.

At least one of them, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, made it clear she had done her reading on the divine right of kings and the Declaration of Independence.

Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate judiciary committee confirmation hearing.Credit: Bloomberg

“To fully appreciate the profound change the majority has wrought, one must first acknowledge what it means to have immunity from criminal prosecution. Put simply, immunity is ‘exemption’ from the duties and liabilities imposed by law,” she wrote.

“In its purest form, the concept of immunity boils down to a maxim— ‘the king can do no wrong’ - a notion that was firmly rejected at the birth of [our] Republic.

“To say that someone is immune from criminal prosecution is to say that, like a king, he ‘is not under the coercive power of the law’, which ‘will not suppose him capable of committing a folly, much less a crime’.”

Those sharing Justice Jackson’s sense of history might experience dread at the prospect of Trump becoming president of the US again, this time infused with vengeance and protected by something approaching Supreme Court-blessed divine right: a king who could do no wrong, at least in his official capacity.

It could only end badly, as it did for Charles I … eventually. But how long is “eventually”?

Trump is a big admirer of a modern tyrant who basks in immunity from the law, Vladimir Putin, whose domestic opponents tend to turn up murdered, and who, like another dictator much praised by Trump, Xi Jinping (“brilliant guy, runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist, perfect”) seems intent on remaining enthroned for life.

With the US Democratic Party having negligently placed all their bets to this stage on Joe Biden – who will turn 82 in November, the cruelty of years and his decline painfully clear – a new Trump presidency cannot be wished or laughed away.

Perhaps some of the Democrats who have stood by, effectively complicit by having done nothing of consequence to prevent the Trump revival, had done their reading, learning how merciless history can be upon those who act against a king deemed to be incapable of doing wrong.

The addendum to the story of Charles I was a period of the most ghastly revenge when a new king, Charles II, was brought to England’s throne in 1660.

Of the 59 who signed Charles I’s death warrant, 13 were hanged, drawn and quartered, 16 were imprisoned for life, one was pardoned and many fled England.

The bodies of Oliver Cromwell and two other leaders were dug up, hanged in chains and beheaded. Cromwell’s head was mounted on a spike above Westminster Hall.

Ancient history. Nothing remotely like it could happen again. Could it?

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