“Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.”

I’ve lived in the Upper Delaware Valley for five years, first in Pike County, Pennsylvania, and now in Sullivan County, New York. My county went 58% for Trump last November, and several of my pro-Trump neighbors made remarks like that in the lead-up to the election. Deep down, they know Trump is a liar and con artist, even if they find him entertaining and thrillingly transgressive.

They didn’t take his bombast and grandiose promises seriously. Like establishing high tariffs. Abolishing the Department of Education. Arresting diverse “enemies,” including a federal judge, a congressional representative, a mayor and a student journalist. Or slashing funding for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and the National Institutes of Health. Or demolishing federal government agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Board, Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, National Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Federal Drug Administration, Occupational Safety and Health Administration or Environmental Protection Agency. Who’s going to warn you if a wildfire, tornado or hurricane is headed our way? Who will bring emergency relief if you’re unlucky enough to be in its path?

It wasn’t only my upstate neighbors or people like them elsewhere—small business owners, farmers, service sector employees, teachers and retired workers—who declared, “Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.” Sophisticated Wall Street titans wanting tax cuts and deregulation muttered the same thing and then freaked out when Trump imposed tariffs that tanked the stock market. Republican members of Congress have stood idly by and let Trump run roughshod over the limits of executive power, insisting that he is “only joking” when floating ideas like running for a third term. This may be a way to “flood the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon once put it, but such jokes often have serious consequences.

“I don’t know.” That’s what Trump responded when NBC reporter Kristen Welker asked him whether he was obliged to uphold the U.S. Constitution. They were talking about due process for migrants, but Trump’s ignorance of and contempt for the Constitution go way beyond that. Accepting the Emir of Qatar’s gift of a $400 million jet plane, for example, violates Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution, which states that “no Person holding any Office … shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” The Emir of Qatar, formerly a prince, is now a king, and is the personification of a foreign state.

Since his inauguration Trump has issued nearly 200 executive orders. Some are brutally cruel, like invoking an “invasion” to remove migrants with no criminal record to prisons in third countries, or dangerously shortsighted, like withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. Others are peevishly petty like promoting plastic drinking straws, discontinuing minting pennies or demanding higher water pressure in showerheads. As of May 23, 177 court rulings had at least........

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