Jefferson v. Trump on Executive Power

In a comment to a recent essay on Jefferson, “Jefferson on Executive Action,” an Abbevillian wrote:

Can’t put Biden anywhere near Jefferson. Trump. On the other hand, seems to be acting more, much more, in the interest of saving our Republic—whether he is aware of it or not. While no where [sic] near as eloquent as Jefferson—his presidential library may not have any books—he is a compassionate street wise New Yorker.

Is Trump really a political scion of Jefferson? Is he “saving our Republic” because we have moved so very remotely from Jeffersonian ideals? Those questions intrigue us and are worth critical discussion.

This essay is the first of a bipartite series: the first, concerning Jefferson and Trump on the exercise of presidential power; the second, assessment of Trump’s political vision vis-à-vis Jefferson’s own “essential principles of republicanism.”

Quiet versus Loud Executive

Jefferson consistently expressed detestation of political offices and distrust of those persons in them. Upon his failure to win the presidency in 1796, Jefferson writes to James Madison (1 Jan. 1797):

Never was there a more solid unwillingness, founded on rigorous calculation, formed in the mind of any man, short of peremptory refusal. No arguments, therefore, were necessary to reconcile me to a relinquishment of the first office, or acceptance of the second.

Trump, on the other hand, consistently maintains with customary denial and hyperbole, that he beat Joe Biden in 2020, but the democrats cheated, and that his victory in 2024 was a “landslide.” There are good reasons to believe that all of Trump’s runs for the first office have been substantially succored by Moscow, which has a profound interest in thwarting democratic institutions across the globe—in America especially—through cyber-influence. In a recent interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham, Trump boasted that she was walking with a three-time president. He also showed her the “original” Declaration of Independence on a wall in the White House. (Trump in 2021 commented about the US Constitution and said that Jefferson was “a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States!)

Jefferson also stated that there was something morally depraved about the craving for political power. He tells ALC Destutt de Tracy (26 Jan. 1811):

I know that I have never been so well pleased, as when I could shift power from my own, on the shoulders of others; nor have I ever been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Jefferson practiced politics because his intelligence was needed. Political offices were duties, not enjoyments. The exercise of power was a means to an end: government where the first officer was a steward of the people, primus inter pares.

Jefferson practiced politics within the constraints of the laws and expressed strict constitutional constructionism, hence, e.g., difficulties in directing affairs during his governorship when the British invaded Virginia. To the editor of the French Encyclopedia (22 June 1786) on US government, Jefferson offers this corrective:

It should be further considered that, in America, no other distinction between man & man had ever been known, but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionnaire, & generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar. It has been seen that a shoemaker, or other artisan, removed by the voice of his country from his work bench into a chair of office, has instantly commanded all the respect and obedience which the laws ascribe to his office. But of distinction by birth or badge they had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets.

Trump is no Jeffersonian republican. His model of the presidency a one-man autocracy. Whereas Jefferson championed tripartite governing with independent powers to the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, Trump demands the complete and taciturn obedience of the legislative and judicial. He perfectly fits the mold of power-craving dictators: e.g.: Mussolini, Hitler, Hussein, Amin, and Putin. He surrounds himself with billionaires and, each week since he has taken the first office, puts (or aims to put) into law numerous decrees and spews out numerous threats and offensive, belittling comments (tariffs, assertions about taking over territories, reprimands, threats to remove governmental officials from their offices, belittling epithets such as “Sleepy Joe Biden,” etc.). His decrees are made through a technique of swamping: When too many proposals are put into effect, it becomes difficult to combat any of them, even to know where to start. Challenges to his authority are met with derision and disdain.

Trump ignores the US Constitution, for he is above the laws of the land. He has turned American foreign policy upside-down: democratic friends (e.g., Canada, France, England, and Mexico) seem now to be enemies, and enemies (e.g., the presidents of China, North Korea, and Russia) are friends. Consider the US vote in the UN on February 24, 2025, not to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine. The US thus joined such elite company as Russia, North Korea, and Hungary. Even China abstained from voting. Again, Trump viciously ambuscaded Ukraine’s president on February 28, 2025, in front of a global audience, and after the beatdown, he claimed that the event would be good television. He threatens federal judges who have overturned his decrees with impeachment. He expects Congress to be his political puppy. Problems with his presidency—from inflation and a struggling stock market to the war in Ukraine not having ended “in one day”—he blames on Biden. His dictatorial actions he defends thus (Feb. 2025), “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” For Trump, the exercise of power is an end. He of course never cashes out the meaning of “saving his country.”

Jefferson held in suspicion those, like Hamilton in his day and Trump in ours, who lusted after political power. That, to him, was a sign of moral disequilibrium. He says in his First Inaugural Address (4 Mar. 1801), where Jefferson says:

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?

Jefferson was lifelong morality-abiding and self-reflective person. He tells his physician Vine Utley (21 Mar. 1819): “I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour’s previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep.” Moreover, like Benjamin Franklin, he always advised and practiced, avoidance of conflict, except when conflict was inescapable.

Trump, mercurial and narcissistic—pathologically so—is not merely not morality-abiding, he is also morally unstable. His morality is “winning the deal.” Since his first presidency, hundreds of psychiatrists and psychotherapists have officially gone on record as stating that Trump is psychologically unfit for the US’s highest office.[i] All agree on Trump’s narcissism, of the harmful, not harmless, sort. Psychotherapist John D. Gartner, for instance, asserts that Trump suffers from dementia, hyper-mania, and malignant narcissism. “His hyper-manic temperament is where his anger comes to the fore. The 40 tweets in one night, even on holidays. His tweets are always filled with rage, constantly labeling people as losers. Trump is up at 3 a.m. on a holiday, ranting about how anyone who doesn’t idolize him is a loser.” His malignant narcissism is emboldened by his sadism. Trump lives and breathes rage. When he is not being flattered or adored, then he will “destroy and inflict pain on anyone who won’t worship [him].”[ii]

As many have done (e.g., Finkelman, Onuf, Gordon-Reed, and Meacham), one might object that Jefferson was a hypocrite—he voiced disdain of power and yet he spent some 40 years of his life as a politician—and at least Trump wears his thoughts on his sleeve about his craving for power.

Jefferson was not a hypocrite, who professed execration of politics but sub rosa relished power and fame. Instead, he was drawn to political offices from a sense of duty. He writes to Richard Henry Lee (17 June 1779):

In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are, what they should be, burthens to those appointed to them, which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring with them intense labour, and great private loss.

Upon being asked to accept the office of Secretary of State, Jefferson expresses Stoic resignation in a letter to President Washington (15 Dec. 1789):

It is not for an individual to choose his post. You are to marshal us as may best be for the public good.

As one scholar states, “For decades he had voiced a desire to leave politics for private life, but he cared too much about the future to disengage himself from shaping it. … The America that he had helped to establish was more than a nation-state; for him, American was a state of mind.”[iii] In short, Jefferson recognized he had a certain talent for political affairs, and at day’s end, duty trumped desire. He longed for retirement from political matters. He writes to daughter Martha (27 Feb. 1809):

I look with infinite joy to the moment when I shall be ultimately moored in the midst of my affections, and free to follow the pursuits of my choice.

The scenario for Trump is otherwise. The thought of retirement to the quiet of domesticity is for Trump hellish. The office of the highest political office in the world is heaven with one albatross: The US Constitution limits his activities. He envies Putin because Putin has absolute authority over Russia: Dissention is quashed and dissenters removed and often liquidated.

Trump also likely envisages an America that own the Panama Canal, takes over Greenland, and makes Canada its 51^st state. His is a vision, like Putin’s, of empire, with Trump as its emperor. Jefferson’s “empire” was an “empire for liberty,” where the citizens ruled without governmental intrusion.

Trump is not “saving our republic”; he is annihilating it.

Enjoy the accompanying video….

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[i] E.g., Lee Moran, “233 Mental Health Professionals Spell out Dangers of Donald Trump in Chilling Letter,” MSN, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/233-mental-health-professionals-spell-out-dangers-of-donald-trump-in-chilling-letter/ar-AA1sUhzO, accessed 18 Mar. 2025.

[ii] Yelena Mandenberg and John O’Sullivan, “Donald Trump Has Three Mental Disorders as He Becomes ‘tottering, dementing old man,’” MSN, https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/donald-trump-has-three-mental-disorders-as-he-becomes-tottering-dementing-old-man/ar-BB1mvfVy, accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

[iii] Robert M.S. McDonald, “Thomas Jefferson and Historical Self-Construction: The Earth belongs to the Living?” The Historian, Vol. 61, No. 2, 310.

The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily the views of the Abbeville Institute.

M. Andrew Holowchak

M. Andrew Holowchak, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy and history, who taught at institutions such as University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan, and Rutgers University, Camden. He is author/editor of over 70 books and over 325 published essays on topics such as ethics, ancient philosophy, science, psychoanalysis, and critical thinking. His current research is on Thomas Jefferson—he is acknowledged by many scholars to be the world’s foremost authority—and has published over 230 essays and 28 books on Jefferson. He also has numerous videos and two biweekly series with Donna Vitak, titled “One Work, Five Questions” and "The Real Thomas Jefferson," on Jefferson on YouTube. He can be reached at [email protected]

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