How did we get to the point where the president can say and do things that put our culture and democracy at risk, and it’s just shrugged off as if it were normal?

In social media posts and unscripted press comments he uses language that would have been unimaginable coming from a president in any other period of American history. In just the past few months, Mr. Trump: was photographed making an obscene gesture and mouthing a vulgarity at a demonstrator; demeaned a popular TV personality who had just been murdered; called a Somali American member of Congress garbage, adding that all Somalis were garbage; called the Governor of Minnesota “retarded,” an especially hurtful slur as that governor has a son with a disability; and insulted women reporters who asked him challenging questions, calling them “ugly,” “obnoxious,” and “stupid.”

Parents wouldn’t tolerate this from their children and yet here we have a president of the United States demeaning his office by speaking in such a deplorable manner.

It’s not just the president’s speech that has been so “unpresidential.” Mr. Trump’s need to gratify his ego has led him to make exaggerated false claims about his grievances and his successes. He claims that he has been attacked by media, Congress, and law enforcement agencies like no other president in history. At the same time, he boasts that he has improved the economy and made our cities safer than they have ever been. None of this is true.

In an effort to impose his will and worldview, he has surrounded himself with White House staff and Cabinet that not only heap praise upon him and carry out his every whim, but also support his efforts to silence and intimidate those whom he has denounced as critics.

Herein lies a fundamental difference between President Trump’s first and second terms. In the former, some senior members of his staff and Cabinet served as a check on his behavior. Many were fired and replaced. He began his second term with a detailed plan to transform government, and with a more compliant senior leadership (e.g., the Department of Justice and FBI are willing to order investigations of his critics).

This combination of unchecked power, the president’s need to have his every ambition fulfilled, and his disrespect for law and precedent has led to actions that are illegal. In the first few months, his administration put in place a program to remove over 300,000 government employees. He shuttered USAID, the Voice of America, and the US Institute for Peace—all illegal actions as these were congressionally created and funded entities. He later reopened the Institute for Peace as the Trump Institute for Peace; renamed the nation’s premier center for the arts The Donald J Trump, The John F Kennedy Center for the........

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