For a few days, at the beginning of September, Donald Trump had to do without helicopter departures on the south lawn of the White House. An army of gardeners was busy replacing the damaged lawn by the crowd who had come to attend the speech in which he had accepted the Republican candidacy on August 27. By addressing his followers, the outgoing president celebrated “Our beautiful majestic White House known throughout the world as the people’s house”. “The point is that we are there and they are not”, he added in allusion to his Democratic opponents, reducing the edifice to a political war.
This requisition of a national symbol crowned a mandate marked by indifference or contempt for the rules respected by his predecessors. The former businessman’s assumption of normalization did not survive his first few months in the Oval office. With the very specific exceptions of traditional speeches on the State of the Union, the presidency has not changed Donald Trump. On the contrary, he used it to relentlessly attack all forms of checks and balances, subjecting institutions to pressure unparalleled for decades.
” All the rights “
After having managed for forty years an unlisted company and therefore without having to report to a board of directors, Donald Trump has never ceased to want to push the limits of his presidency. From 2017, this litigation regular assures to have “The absolute right to do what[il] wish[t] with the Ministry of Justice ”. Two years later, he goes up. “Article 2 [de la Constitution américaine, qui concerne le pouvoir exécutif] gives me all the rights to a level never seen before ”, he assures, in July 2019. Adding: “I can do whatever I want as president. “
This claimed freedom has been accompanied by a permanent upheaval of unprecedented scale, at the expense of the continuity of the State. A year after the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency, 34% of his team had already been renewed, according to the accounts of Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, specialist in governance at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Very far from 6% of that of Barack Obama or of 11% of that of George W. Bush.
“I can do whatever I want as president. Donald Trump
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