President Trump is famous for his love of everything gold and other trappings that connote royalty, whether it be large military parades or extravagant inaugural balls.
But in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Mr. Trump went a step further, likening himself to a king as he celebrated his administration’s move to kill New York City’s congestion pricing program.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The White House then reinforced the message, recirculating it on Instagram and X with an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown on a magazine cover resembling Time, but called Trump.
Mr. Trump’s expansive views of his power have been evident in his words and deeds. He has liberally dispensed executive orders that have gone beyond what is considered to be legally permissible. He has fired officials, run roughshod over federal agencies in ways that go beyond his authority and frozen funds that Congress had already appropriated.
And just last week, the president made clear that he believed he had broad leeway to reshape the government in any way he saw fit.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, apparently referencing a version of something Napoleon Bonaparte may have said. The origin though is unclear.
By killing congestion pricing, Mr. Trump suggested he was saving New York.
He vowed during the election to halt the program, which charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, when he entered office. In an interview with The New York Post this month, he characterized the toll as being “destructive” to New York.
“If I decide to do it, I will be able to kill it off in Washington through the Department of Transportation,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.
On Wednesday, the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, made good on the president’s wishes. He laid out Mr. Trump’s objections to the program in a letter sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul and said that federal officials would contact the state to “discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations.”
“I share the president’s concerns about the impacts to working-class Americans who now have an additional financial burden to account for in their daily lives,” Mr. Duffy wrote.
Mr. Trump’s first month back in the White House has been full of moments where he has invoked almost monarchical power. In his Inaugural Address, he said God had saved him when a would-be assassin made an attempt on his life in order “to make America great again.”
Some of his policy moves have rested on a far more expansive legal theory — known as the unitary executive theory — of presidential power.
Part of the theory would interpret some of what Mr. Trump has been doing as lawful under the belief that it is not illegal to disregard an unconstitutional statute. But even if the prevailing laws were valid, the president seems to be suggesting that he is entitled to break them if his motive is to save the country.
An avalanche of lawsuits have been filed to contest many of the executive actions and in some cases delayed them from being implemented.
Ms. Hochul explicitly pushed back on Mr. Trump’s presentation of himself as a monarch in her statement about the revoking of congestion pricing. In recent weeks, she spoke with him multiple times to try to convince him of the program’s benefits, only to see the plug pulled.
“We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king,” Ms. Hochul said. “The M.T.A. has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this critical program. We’ll see you in court.”
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