Megalomania much? This week The Atlantic reported that Trump is no longer comparing himself to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln because he has bigger ambitions. “He’s been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live,” the confidant told the magazine. “He wants to be remembered as the one who did things that other people couldn’t do, because of his sheer power and force of will.”
So, apparently, he has begun thinking of himself in the class of what Hegel described as the “heroes of an Epoch”: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte.
What could possibly go wrong?
In today’s “To the Contrary Podcast,” The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and I discuss Trump’s grandiose ambitions. We also discuss Trump's war on free speech and press freedom, US relations with Ukraine, Russia, and China, and King Charles III’s remarkable speech to Congress. And finally: Is it even remotely possible that Trump is thinking of extending his dynasty by running Don Jr.?
FFS.
You can read Glasser’s latest piece here: “In Trump’s America, It Takes a King to Praise Democracy.”
The King’s biggest applause line was a tribute to Magna Carta, the thirteenth-century compact between an English monarch and his restive nobles, which, Charles noted, has become a pillar of American constitutional jurisprudence, with the Supreme Court citing it at least a hundred and sixty times in its history, not least to establish “the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”
It was a telling sign of our dysfunctional times that members of Congress from both parties, having been increasingly iced out of decision-making by a President claiming unprecedented executive power for himself, immediately rose for a standing ovation. There were whoops and cheers and what appeared to be grins of amazement at the King’s cheek.
Did it matter that Donald Trump did not get the joke?
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Happy Saturday.
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Some highlights of my conversation with Susan Glasser
A whole new level of megalomania…
Dreams of grandiosity and extremists ever more radical acts.
The hypocrisy of the White House Correspondents’ invitation to Trump.
And, finally….. Don Jr? Seriously?
