Does Trump Know What ‘Legal’ Means?

My best friend growing up was the daughter of an attorney who was the co-founder of a law firm which is still one of the most aggressive and successful law firms in Washington, D.C. My friend, her name was Judy, also wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up but decided she wanted public service rather than corporate law, so she ended up as a staff attorney for the FTC.

I happened to spend some time with her several months after Reagan was inaugurated and I asked her if her job was secure, given that Reagan was always going on about how he wanted to reduce the size of the government, even though under his tenure the number of people working for Uncle Sam actually increased.

“Of course my job’s secure,” Judy said to me. “I’m a lawyer and lawyers run the government. After all, it’s a government of laws, right?”

Every four years we have a national election and every four years the GOP always pushes the same nonsense about how government, or at least the federal government, is no good. The last GOP Presidential candidate pushed this argument to its limits by endlessly accusing some unnamed, government bureaucrats inhabiting something called the Deep State with wielding too much unchecked authority which let them ‘rig’ the election against him.