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Notes -
"I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally."
So this feels like a bit of an escalation to me. My attempt at an analysis, from someone who is not American:
Overall, I feel like this is kind of a misplay from Trump - I think that it guarantees that the next Democrat administration will do the same to his executive orders and pardons. I worry that this will lead to each administration basically cancelling everything that the previous one did, which I worry will lead to more power being entrenched in the permanent bureaucracy (as the administration's actions will all be seen to be impermanent, so the bureaucracy will just ignore orders they don't like). Some will argue that is the current state of affairs, and I don't necessarily disagree; the worry is that it would prevent another Trump-like figure from actually making changes.
I also think that this is one of those actions that does lend a bit of credence to the accusations that Trump is acting like a fascist. To be absolutely clear: I think there is no actual informational value in almost all accusations against Trump of any sort; I think that almost everyone who accuses him of anything has started from the position of "Trump bad" and used that to justify any and all accusations against him. That being said - this feels like the sort of action that will kick off another escalation cycle. One thing that I've noticed about a lot of US political escalations is that they often start with an action that is fully legal, but against form; the other party then does something that is mostly-legal, which the first party then uses to claim that the first party has completely abandoned the rule of law. I am right-wing biased (I lean libertarian, but that's a "more libertarian than we are now", as opposed to an "absolute libertarian") - but even with that, I can't think of an equivalent on the left to this.
So, for the American commentators - should I be concerned about this? Is this just Trump saying shit, is there a left wing equivalent I missed, is there some form of precedent that excuses it? Did I miss something major in my interpretation of it? Is this just not a big deal at all?
Consider all the things that Trump says he will do that never come to fruition and some have literally no chance of ever happening. From literal promises like lower prices, end to Israel/Ukraine conflicts both on day one (which we're way beyond) to the impossible like lowering medicine prices by 1500% or the trillions of tariff revenue. His admin boldly claims to have saved millions of lives from fentanyl. He's a natural liar and anything he says needs to be interpreted under this lens. Just go back a few months and you see this exact same sort of nonsense like threatening to take Greenland, make Canada into a state or whatever.
And it's not just him, it's the whole structure around him. Musk went on Fox News during the doge period literally promising increased social security payments, it was Pam Bondi who said they saved 258 million lives, and multiple parts of the admin during and before the campaign (and even earlier this year!) were all claiming to be fine with releasing the Epstein files
Only to go on and threaten MTG/Massie/etc for trying to get the files he had no problem with it and was "inclined" to do, then when the votes were clearly against him suddenly be ok with doing it again at the same time he orders an investigation to be started for the purpose of delaying things more.
So the first question is why take anything he says seriously? He lies as naturally as he breaths and he makes ridiculous bold claims that will never happen. His admin tries to follow up with some "well I guess we kinda technically did it if you're half blind and squint" way like with the flag burning EO where Trump boldly claims to make flag burning illegal whereas the EO doesn't do that whatsoever (and has no ability to) so maybe we'll see some noise of them larping about it but until they actually take a meaningful step forward, why is it any different than the rest of his larps?
Here is my heuristic: if Trump is promising the American people the Moon, he can safely be ignored. (Excepting Ghislaine Maxwell, whose quality of life he really did improve substantially.) If he promises to attack his enemies, then he can be expected to at least make a good faith effort to do so, consequences be damned.
How well the latter will work depends a lot on the specifics. His progress on defeating free trade is rather impressive (though I think there is still a court decision pending if he had the authority to enact tariffs on that scale). Directing his AG to attack his enemies has mostly been meh, because he does not do a good job of convincing the courts. Getting rid of illegals and/or Hispanics is something where he is actually making progress due to his willingness to spend a ton of taxpayer money to have his goons deport school girls. Sending the national guard to cities to punish them for voting against him is more meh, for the most part he is making the liberals mildly uncomfortable.
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