Fear of constitutional crisis escalates in U.S.; Canadians can relate
WASHINGTON — The prospect of a constitutional crisis is familiar to Canadians, one that triggers feelings of dread, fear and no small measure of loathing — and now perhaps pity for the United States, which some say Donald Trump is leading towards a constitutional crisis of its own.
The pressure points are everywhere: a president who floats conspiracy theories to undermine the electoral process, deploys the military and pulls other executive levers purely for political gain, revokes White House media credentials for partisan reasons and is willing to flout constitutional norms in replacing his attorney general.
“It does violence to the constitution and the vision of our founders to appoint such a person in such a manner to be the chief legal officer in our country,” the presumptive new House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday on “Face the Nation,” of Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker as the acting replacement for the fired Jeff Sessions.
Democrats are convinced Whitaker, who has not been confirmed by the Senate as the constitution requires, has been named to the role to thwart special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe — something Sessions famously refused to do, frustrating the president by recusing himself from the investigation.