In the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the framers were clear on what they were NOT creating: A monarchy. One delegate expressed the group’s absolute conviction that the founding document must exclude even the “fetus of monarchy.”

Yet, 238 years later, watching Trump’s inaugural week, it was both awful and comical to see the royal pretentions of King Donald. There were silly gestures, like him waving around a ceremonial sword (made more ludicrous by the fact he was a cowardly rich-boy draft dodger). Plus, the staged spectacle of him imperiously signing stacks of orders, proclamations, and pardons in a show of “Kingliness.”

Petty pomposity aside, though, he is an untethered megalomaniac whose inaugural speech re-asserted such monarchial concepts as “the divine right of kings” and “manifest destiny.” And let us not naively dismiss Trump’s flat-out claim that the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president,” or that he previously suggested “termination” of the Constitution to return him to the White House.

Indeed, he now contends that he can unilaterally terminate a bedrock Constitutional right: The 14th Amendment provision guaranteeing citizenship to everyone born in the USA. He has royally and unconstitutionally decreed that children born here whose parents were undocumented immigrants are not citizens, but “aliens.”

This is Jim Hightower saying… Well, at least there’s the 22nd Amendment, which makes clear that he can’t be president again, right? Uh… maybe. Trump is already suggesting his royal court might find a way to keep him in power, just as they’re now contriving to void the clear citizenship protection of the 14th Amendment. Despots don’t obey Constitutions – they pervert them. And We the People must reject the perverters.

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