U.S. President Donald Trump gestures, while he boards Air Force One, as he departs for New York at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS Ken Cedeno
Former Republican Chief of Staff William Kristol says President Donald Trump is precisely the king U.S. founders were trying to avoid when they devised a Constitution setting the rule of law over all things.
“Two-hundred fifty years ago tomorrow, on January 10, 1776, in Philadelphia, Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common Sense,” said Kristol, which made the argument against monarchy like the ‘Royal Brute of Great Britain.’”
Paine’s book sold well, and the rule of law has been central to the American experiment in self-government. From Paine on, Kristol says “No Kings” has meant that the law is king.
“[But] is the law king in America today?” asked Kristol. “We’re seeing a sustained and conscious effort to undermine the rule of law. From Minneapolis to Caracas, from the White House to the Department of Justice to the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump administration has engaged in … eviscerating the rule of law and reducing us to mere subjects rather than self-governing citizens.”
Trump confirmed on Wednesday in the New York Times that he respects no legal limits on his power, acknowledging only “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I suppose we should thank Trump for providing a kind of living illustration, a kind of tableau vivant, of the claims of absolute monarchy that Thomas Paine ridiculed and denounced. But Trump’s not a faraway king from whom we’re about to separate ourselves. He’s our president,” said Kristol.
Meanwhile, Kristol said Trump’s Justice Department is “routinely ignoring the law that required the full release of the Epstein files by December 19, 2025,” forcing lawmakers to ask a federal court to appoint “a Special Master and an Independent Monitor to compel” the Justice Department to produce the files as legally required
“Earlier this week, political scientist Jeffrey Isaac addressed the apparent paradox that people who allegedly believe in ‘America First’ have rallied to support Trump’s attack on another country. But as Isaac puts it, at its heart Trumpism is neither isolationist nor interventionist. It’s about authoritarianism: ‘contempt for the very idea of law’ and ‘an embrace of the power politics of domination and conquest.’
“So which is it to be?” Kristol asked, “A stand for liberty in the spirit of Thomas Paine, or acquiescence to the depredations of our own mad King George? The rule of law or the rule of Trump?”
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