By utilizing the South Lawn of the White House to promote vehicles for his largest campaign benefactor and insisting on taxpayer-funded advertisements falsely claiming he successfully closed the southern border, President Donald Trump is illustrating his belief, as he proclaimed during his first term, that he has “the right to do whatever I want.” This is his distorted interpretation of Article 2 of the Constitution, which outlines presidential powers.
The president of the United States is not a king; he isn’t a monarch chosen by divine right.
However, the president of the United States is certainly not a king. As former President Barack Obama noted in a “60 Minutes” interview in November 2020, the “president is a public servant.” The individual elected to this position should prioritize the public’s interests over personal gains.
As widespread protests against the Trump administration occur nationwide, we must reflect on the historical significance and obligations of the presidency. “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants,” former President Teddy Roosevelt stated in a May 1918 editorial in The Kansas City Star. Similarly, former President Harry Truman expressed in 1954, “I would much rather be an honorable public servant and known as such than to be the richest man in the world.”
The president is supposed to represent us, the American people. This means serving not only those who voted for him or contributed to his campaign but all citizens. In line with America’s enduring values, Trump should focus on preserving and fortifying our democratic principles at home and abroad rather than undermining them through cordial relations with authoritarian leaders.
The American populace elected Trump, entrusting him to act in their best interests. “Public service is a public trust,” states Executive Order 12674 from 1989, outlining core ethical principles for government officials and employees. President Thomas Jefferson asserted, “When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.”
The thought of Trump—who aspires to privatize public services such as the U.S. Postal Service and education, and even divest public lands to private entities—viewing himself as public property is laughable. The sheer, meticulously orchestrated chaos he has unleashed in the early weeks of his second term confirms that serving the public’s best interests was never part of his agenda or that of Project 2025. In this respect, Trump, who relishes showcasing his wealth, stands in stark contrast to Truman.
In that 1918 piece, Roosevelt emphasized the public’s duty to “blame [the president] when he does wrong as much as to praise him when he does right … in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation.”
The challenge is that Trump and his supporters often do not appear committed to ethical standards or lawful conduct. Throughout his career, Trump has shown a disregard for accountability. “Deny everything” is a lesson he learned from his attorney and mentor Roy Cohn. Trump has effectively dismantled independent federal agencies that serve as accountability mechanisms—in terms of oversight and regulation—within our government’s system of “checks and balances.”
Trump has shown over the course of his career that he doesn’t take accountability for his actions.
Importantly, Roosevelt’s remarks about the president being the foremost public servant were not directed at then-President Woodrow Wilson but rather aimed at his fellow Americans, urging them “to tell the truth about [the president’s] acts. … Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
In essence, we, the American citizens, hold the responsibility to each other in safeguarding our democracy. This entails electing presidents dedicated to public service, and should we fail to do so, we must utilize our First Amendment rights to protest against them.
They are here to serve us, not the other way around.
