Donald Trump’s “big lie” after the 2020 election was that it was stolen: machines that flipped votes, mules collecting hundreds of ballots, recently embellished with claimed hordes of undocumented voters. We now hear no such discredited charges; apparently this election was all legitimate — as we know the last one was too.
But the president-elect has a new big lie: “I will be a dictator from Day One!” With two months to his taking office, Trump is already rolling roughshod over one of the constitutional restraints he faces — i.e., acting like a dictator; and it is poetic justice that the newly irrelevant political actors are the Republican U.S. senators who supported his rise.
Let me explain. On Nov. 10, Trump ordered the Senate to “agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!).” Quickly, the three leading candidates in the Nov. 6 election for Senate majority leader agreed, because they need his support to win the job.
The Constitution states the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint” ambassadors, judges, officers of the U.S. But if the Senate is in recess, the Constitution allows for certain appointments — i.e., Trump could unilaterally appoint his minions to these positions. And since the Senate can set its own rules of procedure, that is exactly what the three craven senators have promised. To be clear, they have agreed to recess the Senate and allow Trump to make unilateral appointments, thereby making themselves irrelevant in some of the most significant decisions of a new administration — i.e., to give Trump unchecked powers; this is just what a dictator wants and achieves.
One further irony is that Sen. Mike Lee will presumably cheer this step, despite his long Jan. 7, 2014, address at the Heritage Foundation exercising his high flying constitutional acumen to decry the Obama recess appointments to the NLRB and CFPB.
Maybe the Senate will get a backbone and re-elect Mitch McConnell, who would never allow the Senate to be so marginalized. But I doubt it.
Ken Jameson, Salt Lake City
