Either Donald Trump has never read the Constitution or he just doesn't care

Leaving aside questions about his personal stability and lack of a moral compass as exhibited pretty much throughout his entire adult life, probably the most disturbing thing about Donald John Trump is his lack of commitment to- or apparently even knowledge of- the basics of the American system or the values and beliefs on which it's based.

To put it bluntly, it seems patent that the President of the United States has either never read the Constitution he swore at his inauguration to "preserve, protect, and defend," or doesn't take it seriously.

We're all familiar with his promise during the campaign to pay the legal expenses of supporters who beat up demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights at his rallies. I simply cannot understand how his repeated suggestions throughout his thankfully brief political career that there should be laws against "intentionally misleading" news stories haven't been a red flag to anyone with the rudimentary intelligence necessary to realize how impossible it would be either to prove an intention to deceive or find a court or referee of some kind objective enough or arrogant enough to presume to make such a judgment. Our first openly authoritarian president, who has been embraced with such blatant hypocrisy by those who claim to be most concerned about adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, throws the word "treason" around so loosely that it has become obvious that at some level he actually believes that opposition to him personally is "treasonous!"

The lunatic right has used the term rather loosely for many, many years. But as it happens- perhaps anticipating the abuse of the concept- the Founding Fathers defined the word "treason" very precisely in the Constitution itself, in Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Pretty cut and dried. Of course, some of those who throw the word around loosely try to find wiggle room in the notion that they are using the word in a sort of generic way, not in a technical legal sense. Hogwash. To call a person a traitor is no small matter, and the impact the word carries is strong enough that it's hard to think of very much short of the constitutional definition which could possibly justify its use.

In fact, I will exercise sufficient restraint to avoid even raising the question of whether Vladimir Putin's Russia qualifies as an enemy of the United States. But I will comment parenthetically that despite all the disingenuous demurrals it's rather hard under the Constitution's very specific definition of treason to avoid the conclusion that those styling themselves "the Confederate States of America" committed it back in Lincoln's day.

What is particularly worrisome in the case of President Trump is that he seems to think that actions hostile to him, as president, are inherently treasonous. Anybody with a grade school civic student's understanding of our system will realize, of course, that such a view would render the president- any president- immune to legitimate criticism or opposition and effectively not only make freedom of speech and the system established by the Constitution impossible but protect the president from any accountability whatsoever. It would be tantamount to making the presidency a form of elective and term-limited absolute monarchy or- dare we say it?- dictatorship.

Does Donald Trump want to be a dictator? To say that would be going too far. For one thing, I doubt that he is either thoughtful enough or cares enough about our most basic values to think the matter through. Donald Trump is loyal to Donald Trump. His narcissism is his political credo. But that doesn't make his disregard of the values reflected in the Constitution he once swore to preserve, protect, and defend any the less real or any the less obvious.

It seems that our loose cannon of a president delivered himself of the following truly remarkable tweet today:

Now, the White House's own summary of that very conversation seems to confirm the gist of the charges against the president and raises some very serious and quite valid questions about whether Mr. Trump committed an impeachable offense in making it. But even if we assume that Rep. Schiff outrageously exaggerated what the president actually said... "illegally?"

Treason?

This is no merely irresponsible, over-the-top, generic, rhetorical use of the word "treason." The president actually raises the issue of Rep. Schiff's arrest. Even if that, too, was merely done rhetorically, how can it not raise questions about Donald Trump's loyalty to the Constitution and fitness to serve as president even in his most partisan defender who even pretends to care about that document and the way of life it safeguards?

The longer this man remains in office the harder it is to take his defenders who claim to revere the Constitution seriously. And the more stubbornly they continue to defend the ever-increasingly indefensible, the harder it's going to be to take them seriously even after Donald Trump is gone.

Do they really not realize that? Do they really not see that in siding with a man who holds the very values they have built a political identity out of professing to love and cherish in cheerful and utterly undeniable contempt, they not only convict themselves of hypocrisy but utterly destroy their own personal and professional credibility?

And can any rational person who truly does revere the Constitution and its values fail to see why Donald Trump must be removed from office, and the political element he represents purged from the Republican party and the conservative movement if either one is ever to be taken seriously again?