Trump's core belief is crippling him

Friends,

Trump’s domestic and foreign policies — ranging from his attempted coup against the United States in January 2021, to his ICE and Border Patrol excesses (including murders in Minnesota), to his incursion into Venezuela and abduction of its president, to his attack on Iran, and his threats against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland — all undermine the rule of law, domestically and internationally.

But that’s not all. They threaten what we mean by civilization.

The moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Otherwise, we’d be permanently immersed in a brutish war in which only the fittest and most powerful could survive.

Trump believes that might makes right — that the stronger are entitled to attack and exploit the weaker. Violence against those who are or appear weaker is a hallmark of his presidency and his outlook in general.

He is profoundly and dangerously wrong.

In January, he called the unilateral military intervention that ended in the kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro an example of the “iron laws that have always determined global power.”

What “iron laws” is he referring to? “Might makes right” is not an iron law. It marks the destruction of the rule of law.

When challenged about the Maduro operation, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller mocked Jake Tapper on CNN for his apparent naïveté about “international niceties” like the United Nations charter. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” said Miller.

Sorry, Stephen. Strength, force, and power do not “govern” anything. They’re the exact opposite of governing. They’re survival of the fittest — the law of the jungle.

On April 7, Trump told the Iranian regime to surrender to American might or “a whole civilization will die tonight.” That kind of talk doesn’t enlarge American power. It delegitimizes American power.

In reality, Trump is destroying any remaining faith that the United States can be trusted to exercise power responsibly. He is also, not incidentally, erasing any distinction between the exercise of American might and Russian conduct in Ukraine and Chinese behavior in the South China Sea or (potentially) over Taiwan.

If the United States stays on this course, it will find itself bereft of allies and friends, a lonely superpower in a lawless international system it has helped to create.

The genius of America’s post-1945 foreign policy was to embed America’s power in international institutions and laws, including the UN charter, emphasizing multilateralism, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

America didn’t always live up to these ideals, of course. But all nations, regardless of their size or power, had a stake in them. They not only helped legitimize American power but also maintained international stability and avoided another world war.

The same moral underpinning provides the foundation for a good society. To be morally legitimate, any system of laws must be premised on preventing the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. If a system is to be broadly accepted and obeyed, the entire public must believe that it is in their interest to support it.

But this aspiration is easily violated by those who abuse their wealth and power. Maintaining it requires that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us hold them accountable if they don’t.

Yet we now inhabit a society grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated and less constrained than at any time since the first Gilded Age. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because the powerful feel omnipotent.

The wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, and a handful of others is almost beyond comprehension. The influence of Big Tech, Big Oil, and the largest aerospace and defense corporations extends over much of America and the globe. AI is likely to centralize wealth and power even more.

Meanwhile, Trump — enabled by cowardly congressional Republicans and a pliant majority on the Supreme Court — has turned the U.S. presidency into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of American government in history, arrayed on the side of the powerful, domestically and internationally.

A direct line connects Trump’s attempted coup in 2020 and January 2021 to his capture of Maduro, to his attack on Iran without congressional authority, to his blatant corruption. All are lawless. All are premised on the hubris of omnipotence.

You see much the same in Putin’s war on Ukraine. In Xi’s threats against Taiwan. In global depredation and monopolization by Big Tech and Big Oil. In Russian, Chinese, and American oligarchs who have fused public power with their personal wealth.

But unfettered might does not make right. It makes for instability, upheaval, depravity, and war.

History shows that laws and norms designed to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth eventually bring them down — along with their corporations, nations, and empires. And threaten world war.

Trump’s blatant lawlessness is already bringing him down. It will haunt America and the world for years to come.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown were stunned by a "fiery exchange" between Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The health and human services head testified Wednesday morning before the Senate Finance Committee, where Warren asked whether Kennedy would release information about tariff reductions for pharmaceutical companies whose products are sold on TrumpRx.

"For these scam discounts, President Trump has exempted these drug companies from his 100 percent tariffs," Warren said. "So think about that. Big Pharma makes billions of dollars in tariff relief by listing their drugs on TrumpRx, and then they don't even lower the costs on many of these drugs. That is a great deal for Big Pharma. So, Secretary Kennedy, here's my question: Did you sign off on these sweetheart deals for Big Pharma, or was this all President Trump's idea?"

Kennedy claimed that tariff relief was available only to companies that agreed to produce their drugs in the U.S. within the following year, and Warren asked if he had negotiated those agreement and when he would make those deals available to Congress for review.

"I've already said this," Kennedy said. "I'm happy to make the deals available, except for proprietary information and trade secrets."

"I will hold you to that, Mr. Secretary, because if these deals with Big Pharma are so great for Americans, then we should be able to see what promises have been made," Warren interjected.

"You have the power to make this deal yourself," Kennedy complained. "Why don't you do that? Why did you – we did this because you refused to do it. You have a lot more power to negotiate than we do. We've got the lowest prices in history."

Warren continued her attempt to ask another question about TrumpRx.

"Americans are getting crushed by health care costs," the senator said, "and you and Donald Trump are actually making the problem worse. The American public deserves better."

"Not on branded drugs," Kennedy insisted.

Warren laughed out loud and mocked his reply.

"Oh, so your answer is Americans should just not take prescription drugs?" she said.

"We will be directing people to the generics, to the cheapest available," Kennedy shot back. "But a lot of doctors prescribe the brands and we're giving them massive reductions in the brands."

"So those mass, mass discounts that people can pay," Warren replied as Kennedy talked over her, "600 percent, they can pay hundreds of dollars on TrumpRx x or they can get it for $12 at Costco."

At that point, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking Democrat on the finance committee, stepped in.

"This is the second instance of the secretary denying the public's right to know," Wyden said. "That's all that the members on this committee have asked for."

CNN's producers cut away after Wyden's interruption, and the "Situation Room" hosts reacted to the testimony.

"Pretty lively exchange," Blitzer said.

"Yeah, I mean, not surprising in many ways, but certainly fiery," Brown agreed. "It's not clearly his first time being under scrutiny and a tough line of questioning from senator."

- YouTube youtu.be

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) touted President Donald Trump's naval blockade of Iran because he said it was "literally starving" the people of the country.

In an interview with Newsmax host Ed Henry this week, Marshall argued that the U.S. military was "locked and loaded" after Trump suggested to CNBC that he was willing to begin bombing Iran again if negotiations failed.

"And, well, again, we have our foot on Iran's neck right now," the senator explained. "When the president walks in the room, he's negotiating. There's a camera in front of him. He's negotiating, and again he's negotiating with these irrational religious zealots, that's just next to impossible, so they need to know he's serious and he's dead serious."

"If this turns into weeks, I think that's when we're going to start getting antsy," he continued. "But also, we had this embargo working as well, the blockade."

"And we're literally starving them both financially, as well as they can't feed themselves either very long."

Marshall argued that the lack of negotiations with Iran was "a good thing."

"The embargo, the blockade is there as well," he remarked. "I've got confidence in the president. That the president's got this."

The Supreme Court has been grilled by a political analyst who believes some members have found a way to hide their actions from the public.

The Supreme Court has employed a secretive practice known as the "shadow docket" to issue significant rulings. This mechanism allows the court to release orders and decisions with minimal explanation or transparency, often favoring religion and Donald Trump while avoiding public accountability.

Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte suggested that some members of the Supreme Court were avoiding debate and public scrutiny on issues by using the "shadow docket" and that doing so is cowardly.

She wrote, "There are many theories swirling around for why they have increasingly chosen to abandon their basic duty to legal transparency. And the likeliest one is also the simplest: They’re cowards.

"No matter how poorly they might be constructed, majority opinions have the force of law. Publishing them means that other people can read and scrutinize them, and mock the justices when they write illogical, unsupported, or embarrassing opinions.

"Rather than endure the shame of public scorn — which would still make no material difference to their levels of power — the justices would rather hide their views.

"Though they may occupy the highest spot on the judicial bench, the Court’s conservative members have revealed that, with these gutless actions, they are not much different than the rest of MAGA."

Legal experts had previously flagged the so-called "shadow docket" as a dishonest way of passing rulings.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has defended the court’s use of the shadow docket, but instead has endorsed the term “interim docket,” citing the temporary nature of rulings decided using the tactic.

Georgetown University law professor Stephen Vladeck said, "When you’re going to have rulings producing these massive and permanent effects, it seems kind of disingenuous to label them as interim."