The President of the United States awoke this morning and once again screamed, "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" at his 70 million followers on the Tweet Machine. Then he implored Republican lawmakers to vote against a resolution that would limit his ability to strike Iran without congressional approval in a tweet that also derided the Speaker of the House with playground insults and veered off into complaints about impeachment and, again, "presidential harassment." This is supposed to convince the American public that Congress should leave the president alone—the same president who yesterday could be found sniffing and breathing heavily and slurring his words—to make unilateral decisions about war and peace.

One thing to remember in all of this is a passage from the United States Constitution: Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11. "The Congress shall have Power...To declare War." That's as opposed to the Executive, which does not have the Power. Presidents from both parties have steadily eroded this distinction over the years, and Congress has happily ceded much of the responsibility—perhaps because members would rather not get on the record about whether they support deploying American troops and assets to, like, everywhere. Since the dawn of the War on Terror, Presidents Bush and Obama and now Trump have used the initial Authorization to Use Military Force to launch military campaigns all over Africa and the Middle East, often in secret, on the basis that they're fighting terrorism.

Don’t worry about all this Iran war stuff! Just let this guy do his thing. < Getty Images

Still, as ever, Donald Trump had to take things to a new level. In every arena, the president has set out to defy the notion that Congress is a co-equal branch of government with enumerated powers he cannot simply choose to ignore. Apparently, he can. He and his cronies ignore congressional subpoenas, asserting the legislature has no oversight powers over the Executive Branch. He attempts to seize money not allocated by Congress to build his Big, Beautiful Wall. (If the Legislative Branch is stripped of the power of the purse, the Executive is free to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. This is traditionally considered Not Good in a democratic republic.) And now, his administration has rejected the premise that they have a duty to brief Congress on their military and intelligence activities—specifically, with respect to the strike that killed Qasem Suleimani.

Administration officials gave a "briefing" to Congress Wednesday that was so piss-poor that some Republican senators, particularly Utah's Mike Lee, came out afterwards to raise an almighty stink. Apparently, the Trump administration will not share the definitely extant evidence behind their justification for killing Suleimani: that he was planning an "imminent" attack on Americans. They won't even tell members of Congress with approval to receive classified information, in settings where classified information is shared. They won't tell anyone what the evidence is. But have no fear: Vice President Mike Pence has an explanation.

That's right: ignore the reports that the evidence for an imminent attack was "razor-thin." Just trust the administration that lies about literally everything, ever, from the very beginning when they lied about how big the inauguration crowd was when everyone could see what it actually was because it was documented in photos and on video. If they would lie about that—and everything else—why wouldn't they lie about the existence of intelligence showing the guy they wanted to kill was planning an imminent attack, which would help justify the strike under international law? This, of course, is the core problem with a regime that lies all the time, about things big and small: they have no credibility when it matters most. Not that we should simply accept any administration's word on any intelligence claims. We should just extremely not accept this.

Pence made similar claims about protecting "sources and methods" on the Today show. Again, they could have told members of Congress with appropriate clearances what the evidence was, but they didn't. Just trust 'em. You should also trust Pence when he says the Iranians actually meant to kill Americans with the missiles they launched at a U.S. base in Iraq. (The indications are the Iranians were attempting to respond to the Suleimani assassination without escalating the conflict. Hence, no casualties.) It just so happens this rhetoric could justify an escalation on the U.S. side. Trust 'em!

The feeling is general amongst Trumpists that the president should be free to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and that Congress has no say in the matter. Forget that Article 1 stuff from before. Like the Second Amendment, Article II is more important—that's why they put it second, and why, according to Trumpian Constitutional Scholars, it gives the president the power to do anything he wants. (This is the current United States president's actual interpretation of his powers. He has said it over and over again. This is considered normal. Surely it would get the same reaction from The Very Liberal Media if President Bernie Sanders said it.) Anyway, this general disdain for the separation of powers and the checks and balances undergirding our system of government was shared this morning by the reprehensible Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

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Fox News contributor Sarah Sanders on war powers: "I can't think of anything dumber than allowing Congress to take over our foreign policy ... The last thing we want to do is push powers into Congress' hands and take them away from the president." (h/t .@tylermonroe7) pic.twitter.com/85M0y3E4II — Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) January 9, 2020

Here we see the idea the president has sole and unilateral power to make war—including on Iran, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, contrary to the claims of one Mike Pence recently—is firmly entrenched in the authoritarian mind. It's silly to give Congress the powers it was allotted under the Constitution! Those are Trump's powers now. Granted, again, Barack Obama gravely expanded executive power, and he had no excuse: he was an expert in constitutional law, not a goggle-tanned ex-game-show host who just this morning offered some investing advice for our "409k's."

Still, this is remarkably brazen. A growing segment of the American population simply believes the president should be unencumbered by Congress—or, as polling shows, the courts. This is likely how Trump saw the job when he was running for it, and he has endeavored to make those dreams a reality now that this country saw fit to make him the world's most powerful man.

It matters that they are reinforcing this particular view of constitutional jurisprudence on the Fox News Channel, because that's where the president gets the lion's share of his information. The Symbiosis of Stupid. There are reports the president came to his decision not to escalate the conflict with Iran militarily in part after watching Tucker Carlson's show. The Fox & Friends have spent the last couple of mornings behind a Serious War News Desk rather than on the Great American Debate Couch, possibly because they know the big man is watching and they are among his most influential advisers. He's waiting for the teevee to tell him what to do, and it's telling him he's free to do anything he wants, which he already believed anyway. God help us all.



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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