Part of the Trumpian project is to erect such an imposing façade of power and legitimacy that we forget that the underlying foundation is weak—very, weak. Check out this polling aggregation from the New York Times:

Nate Cohn writes: “The latest Times/Siena poll finds just 37 percent of Americans approve of President Trump’s performance, putting his ratings in new political territory. . . . no president’s approval rating has been under 38 percent for more than a few days in the last 17 years, according to our average.”

Until now, that is. Happy Thursday.

It Sure Looks Like Dictatorship

by Will Saletan

Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. attorney general, testified yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is seeking formal confirmation to his job. The whole arrangement is grotesque: Blanche is Trump’s well-paid former personal attorney, and as deputy attorney general, he has already done numerous corrupt favors for the felon who appointed him.

But the hearing was instructive. Blanche displayed the sort of personality that serves comfortably in an authoritarian administration.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Blanche, “Do you think [the] blanket pardon by the president of January 6th rioters was the right thing to do?”

Blanche gave an answer that would have sounded quite natural in a dictatorship: “The Constitution gives the president the full power to pardon anybody for any reason he wants. And so I don’t question President Trump’s authority or his decision to do so.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R. I.) asked Blanche about his role in arranging the dismissals of cases against January 6th defendants. Blanche again: “He has the absolute right to pardon anybody for any reason he sees fit. And every one of them got pardoned or commuted. . . . The fact that my department had to take action in response to those pardons, by dismissing some cases, is exactly what I have to do under the law. And it’s what I did.”

That’s how an apparatchik thinks in an authoritarian regime. To Blanche, “under the law” doesn’t mean that the president has to respect the jurors who convicted his supporters of crimes. It means that the apparatchik must do whatever the president commands. And if the president has a power, that power cannot be questioned, advised, or held to a higher standard.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked, “Is the Department of Justice that you are running independent from the White House?”

“The Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive,” Blanche replied. “Article II of the Constitution gives the power of the executive to President Trump.”