As it appears more and more likely that the Senate will be moving to exclude witnesses and acquit Donald Trump, the journalistic reaction has become frenzied. After MSNBC compared it to letting a wife beater go, NBC’s Jon Meacham on Friday fretted that the Senate is making Trump a “king” who is “above the law.” He warned, “President Trump is functionally a monarch at this point. If the king does it, it's okay.”
The NBC historian panicked, “I think the significance of today and going into the weekend and into next week is, I think, it is now arguable... that Donald Trump may well have now become the most powerful president in American history.”
Continuing the hyperbolic language, Meacham essentially declared Trump a dictator:
That is a raw and elemental definition of power. And I think it's something that we haven't fully grappled with. The idea that what President Trump has done, and this is why the example going forward is fraud. President Trump is functionally a monarch at this point. If the king does it, it's okay. That that's what we're seeing unfold in Washington right now. And I think all Americans, whether your support the President or you don't should pause significantly and think about the long term implications of having a president who is above the law.
This is not new language for Meacham. On December 11, he said of the broader Republican Party: “One of the things that I think Republicans someday if they ever choose to have a reckoning about this will have to figure out is how did they become the monarchical party? How did they become monarchists?”
By contrast, Meacham on December 19 hailed the “formidable legacy” of Nancy Pelosi and her “extraordinary” impeachment.” However, it was less than 11 years ago that Evan Thomas, a one-time Newsweek editor just like Meacham, declared Barack Obama “sort of God” “standing above the country.” Also back in 2009, Meacham co-wrote a cover story for Newsweek that declared “We are all socialists now.”
In the liberal media calculation: Democratic “God” presidents and “socialism” equal good. Republican “monarch” president equals bad.
A transcript of the comments is below.
NBC impeachment coverage
1/31/2020
3:01 PM ET
JON MEACHAM (NBC News presidential historian): I think the significance of today and going into the weekend and into next week is I think it is now arguable — And Chuck, who's reading Federalist 65 check me on this. If you could look up from that — is that Donald Trump may well have now become the most powerful president in American history. There's pause for a second. Think about that. He has the capacity, he has such a standing with his political base that senior United States senators have decided that though he is guilty, they are not going to risk the wrath of the people in order to follow through on what is clearly spelled out in the Constitution.
That is a raw and elemental definition of power. And I think it's something that we haven't fully grappled with. The idea that what President Trump has done, and this is why the example going forward is fraud. President Trump is functionally a monarch at this point. If the king does it, it's okay that that's what we're seeing unfold in Washington right now. And I think all Americans, whether your support the President or you don't should pause significantly and think about the long term implications of having a president who is above the law.
