President Donald Trump insists he’s no monarch, just hours before a coast-to-coast “No Kings Day” protest is set to remind him that Americans don’t swear loyalty to a crown.
In a new Fox Business clip, Trump waves off the idea that a government shutdown was timed to collide with those rallies: “A king… this is not a king. You know, they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king.”
Except the record keeps contradicting him.
Earlier this year, while spiking New York’s congestion pricing plan, Trump crowed on Truth Social, “LONG LIVE THE KING!” He’s also winked at the royal bit in other asides — right down to joking about titles and sharing theatrical imagery of himself robed up like a pontiff. And long before that, he said the quiet part out loud about presidential power: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.”
And perhaps one of his boldest claims that continues to set the tone was a tweet sent just three weeks into his presidency, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
That’s the heart of the fight now — and it’s where conservative media framing goes off the rails.
The story isn’t that Democrats suddenly “discovered” Article II to take down Trump. It’s that Trump has been invoking Article II to justify a maximalist, no-guardrails presidency and opponents are using a well-worn, perfectly constitutional path to challenge it, namely the courts.
Fox News, for example, has framed the coming wave of lawsuits as “a new way to take down Trump” and “more punch than impeachment,” glossing over the fact that similar Article II challenges were brought — and often succeeded — during President Barack Obama’s time in office, yet these actions never put him at risk of removal.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has fired off a blizzard of executive actions on immigration, funding, civil rights directives, federal workforce rules and more while stacking up more than 400 active lawsuits, many that target his barrage of executive orders; some remain intact, others have been ruled illegal.
Constitutional scholars have been clear for years: Article II gives a president real, important authority — commander in chief, appointments (with Senate consent), pardons, receiving ambassadors, the duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” What it doesn’t give is an open-ended license to make law, ignore courts, or bulldoze Congress. Supreme Court precedent has said as much for decades.
That’s why the “No Kings” organizing has caught fire. The rallies are a rebuke to the creeping theory — voiced by Trump allies and echoed in fringe legal memos that a president’s popular vote bestows near-unchecked power and that judges should “stand down” when the executive claims urgency.
Still, the White House accused Democrats of desperately trying new strategies to topple the president.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome takes on many forms — despite the Democrats’ failure to stop President Trump’s incredibly popular agenda in his first term, they’re trying a new strategy this time and failing again,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital. “The Trump Administration’s policies have been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court as lawful despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful lower court rulings from far-left liberal activist judges,” she added.
While an actual conviction in a Senate impeachment trial would result in the president’s removal from office, going to court to challenge a president’s overreach under Article II would result, at most, in the Supreme Court admonishing the president — not booting him from the perch of the White House.
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Reactions have divided sharply along partisan lines.
One critic online said, “He should be impeached for the emolument’s violations since day one. He accepted the ‘gift’ of a jet without congressional approval. He has enhanced his bank account by more than 5 billion and growing, and that is just the tip of the iceberg here. He is the most corrupt and vulgar man I have ever seen.”
Another wrote, “Trump, like any other president or person who resides in this country, must act in accordance of the laws of our country, as well as the Constitution. Trump has tried to reign by Executive Orders, circumventing Congress’ authority on just about everything… HE HAS NOT, AND WILL NOT, unless he is sued for his actions, which is why he is being sued on a regular basis.”
Still, some pointed to the imbalance in the judicial branch as the core issue.
“As long as Trump has the 6-3 majority in SCOTUS, Article II, and indeed all articles of the constitution mean nothing. As soon as a case reaches our highest court… SCOTUS will rule on behalf of Donny boy.”
Another reader captured the tension between legality and politics: “Just because it was on the president’s ‘agenda’ doesn’t mean it’s automatically legal, remember this is a nation of laws? And no, he didn’t win in a landslide giving him a mandate, more people voted against him than for him.”
Whether Article II becomes the Democrats’ new constitutional weapon or simply another dead end will depend less on the courts than on the political will of Democrats to push back against a president who has rewritten the norms of government.
