I teach my law students that every so often in the law, the best way to understand the veracity of a claim is just to say it out loud. They got a great example of this on Monday when President Trump made a contribution to the legal lexicon: “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.”

In terms that would even have made President Richard Nixon blush, our commander in chief sounded more like the leader of some tinpot dictatorship than of the United States.

Our Constitution was designed to reject such arrogation of power. Separation of powers and federalism aren’t fusty concepts designed to please rebellious aristocrats; they are the living embodiment of our founders’ desire to divide and check power — not vest “total” “authority” in one person, no matter how wise that person may be.

That was the basic genesis of the Declaration of Independence — King George III had grabbed all the government power for himself. The declaration’s text proclaims “the history of the present King of Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.” The American Constitution is a self-conscious reaction to that concentration of power, not a document to mirror and enable it.