We have arrived at a destination that was probably inevitable from the moment Donald Trump won the Electoral College and was installed as the President of the United States. He has always believed the rules do not apply to him, and he has always demanded absolute fealty from his underlings while leeching their integrity and self-respect until they have given so much to him that the sunk cost begins to drown them. Then, they feel there's no choice but to give whatever's left until they're all used up and he throws them overboard. And so his allies are now arguing, inevitably, that there are no limits to his power.

Make no mistake: when Alan Dershowitz took to the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon, he was not merely arguing that Trump should be acquitted despite the huge body of evidence that he abused his power to extort the Ukrainian government until they agreed to ratfuck a domestic political rival for his personal gain. Dershowitz was not merely saying Trump's conduct wasn't impeachable. This Harvard Law professor argued that, in effect, the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. In this Age of Shamelessness, Dershowitz will probably still call himself a "civil libertarian" when all of this is done. But he spent his Wednesday making the case for an American King. Perhaps our next autocrat will be a benevolent one who will honor our civil liberties. But your rights aren't really rights if they're contingent on the king's blessing.

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Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." https://t.co/jKErQcS1Iy pic.twitter.com/zo4rL6Zbla — ABC News (@ABC) January 29, 2020

In a monarchy, the national interest is at the king's sole discretion. As a result, the national interest always overlaps, and is often a concentric Venn diagram, with the king's personal interests. For instance, as you might guess, the king tends to think it's in the national interest for him to continue serving as king. But in a democratic republic, of which the United States is purportedly still an example, the executive must be elected at regular intervals. It is up to the public to determine whether the president's re-election is in the national interest. This is accomplished through a process traditionally known as VOTING in an ELECTION. The president cannot attack the democratic process—which Trump did here—on the basis that he might lose re-election and he doesn't think that's in the national interest. HE IS NOT A KING, SO IT IS NOT FOR HIM TO DECIDE.

On Thursday, Dershowitz suggested that "they"—it's unclear who—"characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything. I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest." He offered no explanation of why that is not what he said, because it's what he said. This is the equivalent of the president's "READ THE TRANSCRIPT!" tweets. If the president can declare anything that helps his re-election to be in the national interest—and thus unimpeachable—then he can do anything. That's it.

Dershowitz gazes upon the would-be autocrat. Mark Wilson Getty Images

Incredibly, Dershowitz has tried to cram Trump's pathological self-interest into constitutional law. Trump is certainly incapable of putting the national interest above his own—or, indeed, putting any interest above his own. But there's also the possibility that he is literally incapable of distinguishing between the two. You know, like a king might be. He is so transfixed by the desire to grab at whatever will benefit him right now, this second, that he may well convince himself on the fly that this is good for the country, too. (This is also how, as a champion bullshitter, he often convinces himself of his own lies as he goes.) It's good for the country for his company to take payments from foreign actors—like, say, the Saudis—while he makes United States foreign policy—like, say, towards Saudi Arabia. It's good for the country for his various shithead kids to profit off of his presidency, just like he is.

Here, Dershowitz is arguing that if the president believes his self-interest—getting re-elected—is also in the national interest, he can do WHATEVER HE WANTS AT ANY TIME to make that happen. He can extort the Ukrainians until they smear Joe Biden. He can welcome in the Russian hackers, and invite the Chinese to jump in, too. Could he declare a state of emergency on Election Day in Democratic neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia and Milwaukee to shut down those polling stations? He'd say his failure to get re-elected would constitute a national emergency. Could he have his opponent detained on the basis they're endangering the national interest? If the election goes ahead and he loses, could he disregard the results on the basis that they are a threat to the United States? Does anyone doubt Donald Trump is capable of all these things? He's already declared a phony national emergency to undermine the separation of powers that undergirds our constitutional structure.



You do not need to be a lawyer, which I am not, to see that Dershowitz's argument is completely incompatible with any reasonable conception of a constitutional republic. It is anathema to the basic principle that the president serves at the pleasure of the American public. We do not serve him, and he does not have sole discretion to determine the national interest. (For instance, we have a thing called "Congress.") The incumbent president does not get to undermine the integrity of the democratic process because he really, truly believes that he's the right man for the job. Dershowitz—and the rest of Trump's allies, for that matter—are offering the president a blank check to run roughshod over the institutions of our republic while he yells, as every authoritarian does, that he's just doing what's right for the country. Vladimir Putin does not call himself a king, but he is one in every way that matters.

Dershowitz has long done just about anything to get on television, perhaps bewitched by the warm glow of the lights that signal to his brain that many people are paying attention to him. It's a pathology he shares with the president, and one which led him to represent a rogue's gallery of odious defendants over the years. Everyone has a right to a defense, and maybe that's why Dershowitz represented Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 and got him a sweetheart plea deal when the "financier" was accused of sex-trafficking teenage girls. It certainly wasn't for the glow of the TV cameras: Epstein's case was no White Bronco. Or maybe there was something else in Dershowitz's internal calculus—then and now. Whatever led him here, he is now arguing in favor of autocracy on the floor of the United States Senate. What a legacy to leave. Maybe Harvard will build a shrine to him on campus with some of the money it took from Epstein.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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