Constitutional Duty Quotes
Trump had an extraordinary sensutuvuty to anything that might seem to diminish his popularity, capability or effectiveness--especially if it nimplied that sny one lese might have ben better at something. While his inaguration was a major event in America with his supporters celebrating his elkection, the crowd was smaller than those of the teo previous inaguartions but nine-the-less very imopressive in size and enthusiasm. Then the nes media reported this fact, Trump publicly accused them oif faking the news. He even took a portion if his speech to ther CIA staff to rail about the size of the crowd. When several news organziations released arial photos of of his and earlier inaguration that clearly showed the contrast, we went on the next day. Many were puzzled as to why he would spend a significant proportion of his publioc and press exposure to this trivisl issue in his firdt days as president. Esperienced political hands gave him very pointed advice like this from the former White House Chief if Staff snd thern mayor of Chicago.
In recent years, presidents of both parties have refused to allow Congress in its oversight responsibility to question certain assistants or see certain documents that are not technically national secrets. The questionable legal principle, executive privilege, supposedly assures that the President can get honest confidential advice without the advice giver feeing intimidated that the advice will become public. However, Presidents have also used this principle to cover-up scandals, wrong doing, and incompetence. Since the President simply asserts the “privilege” there is no way of checking in any particular case to determine if it is an abuse or not.