Gordon S. Jackson: President creating a bigly legacy

Early August this year …

As we approach President Trump’s 200th day in office, it’s clear that the whirlwind of his second presidency is not easing. More far-reaching and unprecedented steps continue to reshape the country and Trump’s legacy.

The most recent was the bitterly divisive action Trump took in response to Democratic Sen. Cory Booker’s joke that he had negotiated an agreement with Canada: “We lift our tariffs on Canadian goods and in exchange for the lost revenue we get Mark Carney as our president.”

Calling the remark “treasonous,” Trump ordered the deportation of the “leftist radical” Booker and all the Democratic senators who were caught laughing on video. Now in El Salvador, Booker and his 37 senatorial colleagues are fighting in the U.S. courts to be allowed to return. The Washington Post, owned by Trump after winning the paper in a golfing bet with Jeff Bezos, applauded the deportation.

Critics in Congress were not alone in bearing Trump’s wrath. In what even his political opponents concede was a brilliant accomplishment, the Army Corps of Engineers in a surprise overnight move dismantled the entire campus of Harvard University and reassembled it in El Salvador, on vacant land just outside the country’s capital. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he planned to use the campus as a culinary school.

Then came Trump’s most puzzling move, after learning that the European Union had implemented heavier tariffs on U.S. goods than the U.S. had on theirs. “We have a tariff imbalance that is exploiting American workers,” Trump said, announcing that he was ordering “a tariff on tariffs” to rectify that imbalance. Caught off guard, White House officials sidestepped questions on what “tariffs on tariffs” could mean. Asked to clarify, Trump said “We’re going to have the best tariffs ever. The biggest. We’ll have the best, bigly VAT: Value Added Tariffs,” he said, apparently not realizing that VAT referred to Value Added Taxes. “Lots of countries have VAT, hundreds of them,” he said. “Lots of VATs.” The U.S. and international stock markets plummeted in response to the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s remarks.

But by far the most consequential development is the adoption of the “New Constitution,” a brief and simple document affording the president absolute power. Passed by the Senate and House, by narrow majorities, it said this document replaces the prior Constitution simply by declaring it to be irrelevant. Ingeniously worded, the new document said it couldn’t be challenged in court – and the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority, reluctantly agreed. Upon its passage, Trump said, “Now that’s a Constitution I can support.”

Then, in a huge embarrassment for the administration last week, a White House spokesman conceded that owing to an administrative error the Army Corps of Engineers mistakenly relocated Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to El Salvador. Trump blamed Biden for the blunder and said he’s trying to get Mar a Largo back. But El Salvador’s President Bukele said he doesn’t have the power to return it.

The White House spokesman denied rumors that the deported U.S. senators and Bukele are currently negotiating on how to share living space in the estate.

Gordon S. Jackson is a retired journalism professor and author or compiler of 21 books, three of them satirical novels. He resides in Spokane.