Last week, The Atlantic reported that President Trump wants to display the Declaration of Independence — perhaps a rare copy — in the Oval Office. That’s fine, although the Oval is already getting so overstuffed with objets d’art as to resemble Louis XIV’s ministorage.
Indeed, it would do Mr. Trump good to be in the presence of our founding document. It would do him even more good to read it every now and then, because he might just find that Thomas Jefferson’s masterwork — which is, after all, a ringing bill of particulars against King George III — rings uncomfortably close to home, and not just because of its 18th-century Quirks of Capitalization. Take only a few piquant examples from Jefferson’s eloquent indictment of a heedless monarch:
“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good …”
Mr. Trump’s administration has frozen spending and sought to shutter agencies approved by Congress, moved to jettison government employees covered by Civil Service protections, canceled federal contracts and threatened to deport people based on their political views. In granting TikTok a temporary waiver to continue U.S. operations, Mr. Trump ignored the requirements outlined in Congress’s ban on that social media platform — and the Supreme Court’s upholding of said ban — which allows for a 90-day delay in enforcement only if the president certifies to Congress that an agreement is in place to end Chinese control. No such deal has been made, and now Mr. Trump has suggested he’s about to extend the waiver.
“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither …”
Mr. Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants is one thing; his packing some of them off to hotels in countries they’ve never lived in is another. And his specious contention that Democrats have fostered open borders to build a menacing new coalition of liberal voters is quite another still. That he’s even entertaining the idea of revoking temporary legal status for roughly a quarter million Ukrainian refugees is cruel and counterproductive. His attempt to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born here flies in the face of the 14th Amendment.
“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice …”
Mr. Trump has purged professional staff from the Justice Department; punished law firms representing clients he doesn’t like by revoking their lawyers’ security clearances; fired inspectors general, overruled his own appointed prosecutor in the corruption case of New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, and disregarded or slow-walked his response to judicial orders.
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance …”
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, including his coterie of juvenile engineers, has burrowed its way into the federal bureaucracy, wreaking havoc, discarding experts on issues from nuclear weapons safety to avian flu and then quickly moving to reinstate them, claiming billions of dollars in supposed savings, then quietly dropping boasts that proved unfounded.
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us …” See Jan. 6, 2021; res ipsa loquitur.
Mr. Trump has celebrated his self-declared authority to rescind traffic congestion pricing on the streets of Manhattan with the social media declaration “LONG LIVE THE KING!” and his aides have circulated a meme of him on a Time-like magazine cover wearing a golden crown. No wonder Lin-Manuel Miranda — no “sweet, submissive subject” — announced, along with the producer Jeffrey Seller, that he’s canceling a planned production of his musical “Hamilton” at the Kennedy Center next year, a run that had been envisioned as part of a celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s 250th birthday.
Mr. Trump isn’t actually guilty of one of Jefferson’s biggest beefs about King George: “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.” Nope; congressional Republicans have effectively done that all by themselves.
Jefferson was America’s original polymath: author, lawyer, farmer, architect, statesman — a “redheaded tombstone,” as the playwright Peter Stone called him in the musical “1776.” And he was pretty smart, warning in the Declaration that “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Like personal vengeance, for one.
But Mr. Trump’s presidency may well be proof of the limits of Jefferson’s — and our country’s — defining credo, that “all men are created equal.” No past president has ever been anything like the equal of Mr. Trump — or so qualified to be on the receiving end of the Declaration’s list of damning charges. He might want to think twice before installing such proof of his unfitness in his own workplace, where he and all his visitors would be reminded of its enduring power and foresight every day.
Todd S. Purdum is a former White House correspondent and the Los Angeles bureau chief for The Times and has written about politics for The Atlantic, Politico and Vanity Fair.
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