Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Trump's Claim of `Total' Authority Is Bunk

The Constitution doesn’t delegate absolute power to the president — or to anyone else.

April 14, 2020 at 11:35 AM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

It’s basic civics.
Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press

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I suppose as a political scientist I can’t avoid the obvious topic: President Donald Trump’s declaration of absolute power in his press conference Monday afternoon. “When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total.” (There was more, but that’s the gist.)