Donald Trump has never been an easy man to do business with. His commercial history is littered with broken contracts, unpaid vendors, disaffected employees, and a litigation record that would exhaust a mid-sized law firm. I am not a psychiatrist, but one need not be professionally credentialed to observe that his sense of loyalty appears to operate on a one-way street. Affection is extended only so long as it is useful.
This is why the latest Weaponization Fund is so troubling. It emerged from a dispute with the Department of Justice, and suddenly we are presented with a mechanism to reward “victims of weaponization.” The difficulty, of course, is that weaponization is not a statutory offense. Many of the cases invoked as evidence of it proceeded through the courts, produced convictions, and survived appellate scrutiny. Do we believe in process, or do we discard it in favor of one man’s retrospective declaration that the system has wronged him? And how does the party that once styled itself as fiscally conservative reconcile itself to a $1.7-billion slush fund?
More concerning still is how such a fund intersects with the President’s temperament. His loyalty to past allies has always been selective, and it is difficult not to wonder what expectations might accompany future disbursements. We cannot know any individual’s private intentions. That uncertainty is precisely why societies bind themselves to the rule of law rather than to the impulses of a single executive. We may debate the contours of that law, refine it, or reform it — but we do so within a system, not above it.
A republic cannot function on the basis of personal grievance elevated to public policy. It must rely on institutions, procedures, and the unglamorous machinery of due process. Anything less is not governance. It is improvisation masquerading as justice.
Read “Unconditional Surrender: The Difficulty of Ending Wars”