“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump posted last month, in a quip attributed to Napoleon. Trump has been acting on that maxim from day one.
But over the past week his assault on the judiciary has intensified. Having been blocked from deporting more than 200 Venezuelan alleged gangsters, federal agents went ahead with the flights anyway. When the judge, James Boasberg, asked Department of Justice lawyers to explain that seeming disregard for the ruling, Trump called him a “radical left lunatic” and demanded his impeachment.
His rhetoric is so out of the ordinary that John Roberts, US Supreme Court chief justice, felt obliged on Tuesday to point out that such threats were “not appropriate”, though he did not specify from whom.