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WOrdinary people throw the word "traitors" too cavalierly by devaluing civil discourse and constitutional understanding. When a president uses this word for no reason, he is himself almost a traitor.
And if the second sentence above is a slight overestimate, even with the "almost" modifier included, well, it's a lot closer to the truth and the reason than it was for President Trump to tweet the Charge on Monday morning to two senior law enforcement officials. Trump concluded a series of tweets saying that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe had done something " illegal and traitor"By questioning his fitness for work.
No, Mr. Chairman. What they did was patriotic in some ways, and at the very least was obedient. But what you do with your accusations of "betrayal" from the Oval Office is to dangerously increase the political temperature. The president is not a king. Opposition to him is not a crime. And the mere consideration of a constitutional provision aimed at eliminating it is far from being a betrayal.
Trump was reacting when McCabe told the TV magazine "60 Minutes" that he was at least serious about Rosenstein, wondering if Trump was mentally fit to hold a job, and trying to figure out how to determine the answer in order to get a solution – including wiretapping if it could be done legally. In doing so, they were in the very early stages of using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, some of which allows the revocation of a disabled president.
It is almost indisputable that Trump acts strangely at times mercuriously and recklessly. There is no doubt that a lively public debate took place on whether Trump was really mentally incapable at the 25th Amendment. The amendment exists for a good reason. Past presidents have been incapacitated. Witness of former President Woodrow Wilson, victim of a stroke and forced to rely on his wife to perform his official duties.
The amendment should not be used lightly and contains important internal guarantees against misuse. It was a thoughtful response from the general public, supported by two-thirds of Congress and the legislative assemblies of three-quarters of the states, to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
To even say that the mere fact of starting a process of evaluating the mental aptitude of a president is illegal and even less treacherous, is to suggest that the 25th amendment itself be ignored. This suggests that the American people acted illegitimately in adopting this amendment and that officials are acting illegally by taking it seriously. This suggests that the president is a law for himself and that simply questioning his suitability is not just a crime, but also the worst crime against the state itself, recognized by the Constitution.
A president occupies a unique power position. When he shouts "betrayal", it has a special weight. And when he uses it to suggest that the questioning is illegitimate, he suggests at least that he is above the law.
Trump's use of treason in this way, as he has done many times during his presidency, is to create a public impression that, if it materializes, would undermine our constitutional order.
Of course, we all know that Trump tweets with abandonment and often ignorance. We know we are not supposed to take all his tweets to the letter. But that does not excuse him. It simply means that we have even more reasons to question his judgment, even if it is not his sanity.
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