James Landale
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
this idea, even an ideology, of the accretion of presidential power.
In other words, that actually the system of checks and balances that we naturally presume exists in the United States and has done for many, many years, there are many in the MAGA world who challenge that thesis and think actually the law has been misinterpreted and the executive, the president, has far more power than the system lets on.
MAGA Carter, you could call it.
and that therefore President Trump is quite right to impose his authority over the courts in a way that previous presidents have done, impose his authority over Congress, and sidesteps Congress by having a massive number of executive orders, using his very limited fiscal powers over tariffs,
to almost trump the basic idea, which is that Congress does the money in American politics, and he has pushed that.
So the Democrats liked that reference because they thought that was a nod to their comfort zone and their argument that they've been making against the administration.
Well, simply by, you know, reminding the fact that British and American forces have fought alongside each other throughout history.
He cited his own family.
He cited, you know, he referred to his own service in the Royal Navy after Donald Trump referred to, you know, some Britons to aircraft carriers as toys.
He did name check Afghanistan.
You know, if you talk to diplomats, they say that, you know, when Donald Trump made those remarks, they said it was made, you know, the king's displeasure was was made clear through, you know, discrete back channels.
And, you know, that that was seen as one of the reasons why the president conducted a reverse ferret on that pretty fast.
because that displeasure was there.
And the thing is, for the palace, that's a real, you know, when you deploy a little bit of political capital like that, it's very judicious.
I mean, Daniel will tell you that, you know, kind of, you know, when has the king done this?