Chris Cillizza itemizes the wrongs in Trump’s idiotic “statement” yesterday on why he was telling a football team that they can’t come to his our house.

2. Trump doesn’t own the White House. Trump seems to be treating 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like one of his Trump properties. If only you had done things the way I wanted them done, then maybe you could be reclining in one of my 5-star hotels right now — or playing golf at one of my award-winning courses. That is how Trump thinks.

But it’s not his, and he’s not supposed to brandish it to punish people for dissent. He’s not supposed to punish people for dissent at all.

3. Trump’s definition of patriotism is very, very narrow. By the definition offered in his statement tonight, patriotism for Donald Trump is standing proudly for the National Anthem, with your hand on your heart. Doing anything else is disrespectful — not only to Trump but to the military and to the country as a whole.

Which underlines what a shallow trivial empty little mind he has. He can understand only show, not substance. Random arbitrary downright stupid shows of fake “patriotism” are all, and actually doing things that benefit the country is nothing.

4. Trump thinks patriotism must equal unwavering loyalty to his view of the National Anthem. If you take Trump at his word in the statement released Monday night, the only way that you can show love and appreciation for those who have fought and died for our country is to stand with your hand over your heart during the playing of the National Anthem. That’s it. That’s the only route.

It’s even cruder than that, because it’s stand with your hand over your heart during the playing of the National Anthem before a football game. It’s not all sports. He’s not out there hounding tennis players or swimmers or marathon runners to stand with hand over heart during the playing of the National Anthem; it’s specific to football, as if football were actually a branch of the military.

How did this ever become a thing in the first place? Football is a game, it’s not warfare. Football players are not the military. What is the perceived connection? Why is so much angry emphasis placed on Visible Patriotism At Football Games but not at other games?

Meanwhile, the real reason Trump suddenly told the Eagles to stay away is because not that many of them were planning to go anyway. He didn’t want to draw a small crowd.

Trump insisted that the Eagles “disagree with their president because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem,” an assertion that carries echoes of dissatisfaction with their failure to submit to his will as well as any anger over treatment of the flag. Of course, as The Post reports, no Eagles knelt in this manner, and the team privately conveyed to the White House that fewer players than expected would show up. Trump told the lie about kneeling Eagles to justify the cancellation in part because he anticipated low turnout, which he hates.

But let’s not let the true import of Trump’s action today get lost in the usual spectacle of Trumpian lying and megalomania. His true message is that African American dissenters protesting in the quest for racial equality — in a manner he claims to find offensive — have no place at a celebration of this country’s heritage over which he is presiding.

In his statement canceling today’s event, Trump claimed that the Eagles do not want to place “hand on heart, in honor of our great men and women of the military.” Instead, he said, he will preside over “a different type of ceremony” that will “honor our great country” and “loudly and proudly play the national anthem.”

In other words, whether any Eagles ever knelt or not, Trump’s explicitly stated justification for disinviting them is that they did kneel to protest the national anthem. That this is a lie is beside the point. The justification he is offering is itself a deliberate statement, and a reprehensible one. After all, what if some Eagles had knelt, as he claims? His argument is that in carrying out this act, they have disqualified themselves from attending a celebration of our national heritage at his White House.

It’s not a president’s job to extort particular arbitrary displays of patriotism from the citizens. What good is patriotism if it’s extorted anyway? Does he put a gun to Barron’s head to extort a loving goodnight? Does he wrench Melania’s arm to make her say how attractive he is? Does it not occur to him that coerced patriotism is not worth the astroturf it stands on?

Michelle Goldberg cites a disquieting statistic:

Whatever Trump does, most Republicans will probably go along with it. In 500 days, Trump has managed to turn much of what remains of his party into an authoritarian cult. Among Republicans, he has an 87 percent approval rating; the only modern Republican president who was more popular with his own party at this point in his term was George W. Bush, and that was mere months after Sept. 11. A recent poll of voters in congressional swing districts found that 71 percent of Republicans “mostly like” Trump’s handling of F.B.I. and criminal justice officials.

Among Republicans he has an exceptionally high approval rating.

That’s appalling. That terrible mean bullying venomous vindictive obscene man is what they like best.

Matt Yglesias underlines the dangers in what Trump’s legal muscle says.

The key passage in the memo is one in which Trump’s lawyers argue that not only was there nothing shady going on when FBI Director James Comey got fired there isn’t even any potential shadiness to investigate because the president is allowed to be as shady as he wants to be when it comes to overseeing federal law enforcement. He can fire whoever he wants. Shut down any investigation or open up a new one.

Indeed, the President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction. Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.

This is a particularly extreme version of the “unitary executive” doctrine that conservative legal scholars sometimes appeal to (especially when there’s a Republican president), drawing on the notion that the executive branch of government — including the federal police agencies and federal prosecutors — are a single entity personified by the president.

What does that sound like? Oh yes, an absolute monarchy. Let’s not go that way.

(Mind you, even Priss Choss would be an improvement on the greedy abusive pig we’re stuck with at the moment.)

But to push that logic into this terrain would not only give the president carte blanche to persecute his enemies but essentially vitiate the idea that there are any enforceable laws at all.

Consider that if the memo is correct, there would be nothing wrong with Trump setting up a booth somewhere in Washington, DC where wealthy individuals could hand checks to Trump, and in exchange Trump would make whatever federal legal trouble they are in go it away. You could call it “The Trump Hotel” or maybe bundle a room to stay in along with the legal impunity.

He’d do it, too. He’d be happy to do it. The checks of course would have to be enormous, but he’d do it.

Of course, as the memo notes, to an extent this kind of power to undermine the rule of law already exists in the form of the essentially unlimited pardon power. This power has never been a good idea and it has been abused in the past by George H.W. Bush to kill the Iran-Contra investigation and by Bill Clinton to win his wife votes in a New York Senate race. Trump has started using the power abusively and capriciously early in his tenure in office in a disturbing way, but has not yet tried to pardon his way out of the Russia investigation in part because there is one important limit on the pardon power — you have to do it in public. The only check on pardons is political, but the political check is quite real (which is why both Bush and Clinton did their mischievous pardons as lame ducks) and the new theory that Trump can simply make whole investigations vanish would eliminate it.

I followed that link on the Bill Clinton item, which was unfamiliar to me, and I’m not convinced…but on the other hand his pardoning of Marc Rich is as disgusting as it ever was, so the point is much the same.

And just imagine what Trump will do with that pardon power if he does get another term and thus as a lame duck doesn’t need to care what the public thinks.

The Times published the whole letter with annotations. It’s a lot.

To take one item at random…

It is also worth responding to the popular suggestion that the President’s public criticism of the FBI either constitutes obstruction or serves as evidence of obstruction. Such criticism ignores the sacred responsibility of the President to hold his subordinates accountable — a function not unlike public Congressional oversight hearings. After all, the FBI is not above the law and we are now learning of the disappointing results of a lack of accountability in both the DOJ and FBI.

And that’s what Trump is doing, is it? Performing his sacred responsibility to hold his subordinates accountable? By screaming insults at them on Twitter every day? That’s how that’s supposed to be done?

Nixon too tried to “hold the FBI accountable” by telling Haldeman to tell the CIA to tell the FBI to drop its investigation of the Watergate break-in. The CIA did what it was told and that’s why Mark Felt talked to Bob Woodward.

Also what they say there ignores what we’ve been told a million times by now: that the White House is not supposed to meddle directly with the FBI or the DoJ, lest it appear to be interfering with law enforcement. That’s part of the president’s “sacred responsibility” too, we are told.

Mind you, all this does underline what a shit system we turn out to have, when a reckless criminal lunatic like Trump cannot be stopped.

Trump’s lawyers are seriously arguing, in a long memo to Mueller, that Trump can’t obstruct justice because as president he is justice himself.

President Trump’s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.

Including federal investigations into his own crimes. So a president can do anything at all and then simply shut down or forbid all federal investigations because his authority is that absolute.

So they’re saying presidents are dictators.

In a brash assertion of presidential power, the 20-page letter — sent to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and obtained by The New York Times — contends that the president cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”

[Read the Trump lawyers’ confidential memo to Mr. Mueller here.]

Other lawyers don’t agree.

Trump is saying he can put an end to any criminal investigation he & he can pardon anyone he wants to. In other words, he can insulate himself & his family if a jury votes to convict them. No other President has successfully set himself above the reach of the law until now. https://t.co/YN3r7Rc2Xn

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 2, 2018

The President’s legal arguments would render whole sections of the Constitution moot, and allow a president to engage in any form of criminality and obstruct an investigation into his own wrongdoing. Nobody is above the law. Not this President. Not any president. https://t.co/DKpZizrpKl

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 2, 2018

This would be a valid legal argument — if our government were a dictatorship. Fortunately, we are a government of laws, not men. And in America, no one is above the law, including the president. https://t.co/yxtu9HUUkz

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 2, 2018

(I don’t know that Schumer is a lawyer. Whatever.)

The attempt to dissuade Mr. Mueller from seeking a grand jury subpoena is one of two fronts on which Mr. Trump’s lawyers are fighting. In recent weeks, they have also begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and in part to pre-empt a potentially damaging special counsel report that could prompt impeachment proceedings.

They have begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and the FBI and the Justice Department, all in the effort to shield the guy who is supposed to be working for the good of the country as a whole (and its people), not for himself.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are gambling that Mr. Mueller may not want to risk an attempt to forge new legal ground by bringing a grand jury subpoena against a sitting president into a criminal proceeding.

“Ensuring that the office remains sacred and above the fray of shifting political winds and gamesmanship is of critical importance,” they wrote.

How can the office remain “sacred” when it’s occupied by that dreadful vulgar monster? He cheapens it with every word, every look, every gesture, every action, every photo op, and god knows every tweet.

“The president’s prime function as the chief executive ought not be hampered by requests for interview,” they wrote. “Having him testify demeans the office of the president before the world.”

That ship has sailed. That ship has made multiple circumnavigations of the globe; Trump himself demeans the office constantly. Having him testify would do a little bit to repair the damage he’s done by showing he’s not free to commit crimes and then laugh in our faces.

They also contended that nothing Mr. Trump did violated obstruction-of-justice statutes, making both a technical parsing of what one such law covers and a broad constitutional argument that Congress cannot infringe on how he exercises his power to supervise the executive branch. Because of the authority the Constitution gives him, it is impossible for him to obstruct justice by shutting down a case or firing a subordinate, no matter his motivation, they said.

If they’re right about it then this is a dictatorship. They’d better not be right.