We Are Already Struggling to Keep Outrage Alive in the Age of Trump

I wanted to open this column by writing “It’s been a banner week for Donald Trump.” So I went and googled his name, then restricted the search to the past week to refresh my memory of which particular outrageous remarks had originated in the last seven days.

As it happened, the ones that popped up were the ones I’d been thinking about. First, his tweet dismissing Judge Jason L. Robart, the Washington State judge who put a temporary halt to his executive order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, as a “so-called judge.” Judge Robart is, of course, so called because he is in fact a federal judge, appointed to the U.S. District Court by George Bush in 2004. This was a wildly inappropriate thing for the president to say about a duly appointed judge. At best, it is a further erosion of civic norms of the type that had become too prevalent on both sides of the aisle; at its most dangerous, this blatant disrespect for a co-equal branch of government raises the fear that Trump will attempt extra-constitutional actions that courts will be forced to thwart, and then undermine or openly defy the judicial system.