If every president did exactly this, you wouldn't see the widespread outrage and claims that what the current president is doing is unprecedented.

If you pay attention to more than what is served up by our media masters then you would know the truth if my claim.

Nah, this is just cynicism.

Two things are true at once:

1. The rule of law is real and important.

2. The rule of law is not a magical thing that enforces itself, and many people seek to undermine it for their own enrichment, so those of us who believe #1 is correct (which is most people in the US) must understand the levers of power and use them to maintain t it.

Despite the current struggles, I think we have some real advantages in this fight. One of those is actually just capitalism. We have financialized trust in the US government, via the bond market. That trust is not entirely downstream of the rule of law, but it is to a fairly large degree. We have already seen once that an effort by the administration to squelch on its contractual obligations was quickly reversed, which was this basic mechanism at action. The worst things DOGE could do with this (illegal) control over the Treasury would be unworkable for this same reason.

There are still horrible outcomes that aren't subject to this constraint (and in my opinion, we need to reform the pardon power in order to maintain the rule of law moving forward), but it's not true that there are no constraints.

We added a trillion dollars to the balance sheet a few years back. The USD is not backed by trust, it's backed by power. Power that is enforced through military might and resource control over vassal states like most of Western Europe. If you want to understand how power really works understand that Trudeau just threatened a tariff on maple syrup until one of his wiser advisors pointed out that all Canadian oil pipelines make a pitstop in the good ol' USofA for, checks notes, "refinement". Dunno, sounds important.

Checkmate, Justin.

Meanwhile, in the nursery the rule of law is quietly taking its afternoon nap.