My statement on Donald Trump's proposed address to the American People from the Lincoln Memorial on July 4

On Independence Day we celebrate that time we got rid of a king. I'm damned if I'm listening to this would-be king who is at this very moment defying our Congress's constitutional duty to oversee the executive and trying to rule on his own with a series of emergency decrees. https://t.co/POfHbCQY3K

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) June 6, 2019

I mean every word of that. If it's not clear I'm talking about his refusal to cooperate with the House committees investigating him, withholding documents and stopping all witnesses from testifying; and the emergencies include the one that allows the administration to sell arms to Saudi Arabia for pursuing their war on the people of Yemen, in spite of a Congressional resolution commanding him not to; the one that may (if sustained in federal court) allow the administration to steal money from our armed forces and use it for the wall Congress has repeatedly refused to fund; and the one that seems to permit him to levy lunatic import taxes on goods from any country he's having a snit with, which increasingly seems to be pretty much all of them.

Proposed Trump administration redesign for the Lincoln Memorial with statue of P.T. Barnum, San Diego Reader, June 2016.

George III used import taxes to accomplish a personal purpose, maintaining the East India Company monopoly on India trade, making it a source from which the government could extort money at will most of the time:

The added profits from Indian territories were immediately seen by the government as a new source of tax revenue. In 1767 and 1769 the Company was compelled to pay £400,000 annually to the government subject to conditions on the payment of dividends (Sutherland 1962). The Company made these payments for several years but then it ran into financial difficulties in 1773. The causes of financial distress were mainly due to the cost of war in India, but also partly to the new taxes levied by government. The end result was that the Company needed an emergency loan from the government, which they received in the amount of £1.4 million. The Company also got extended privileges over the tea trade in North America, which led to the famous Boston Tea Party. The crisis for the Company proved to be short-lived and it was able to repay the loan in 1777.

He obviously didn't use his status to fill hotel rooms nobody wants to stay in the way Trump did at Doonbeg this week, but I bet Jefferson wouldn't have approved of the latter either, and it would definitely struck him as not very gentlemanly.

Trump has certainly

refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

As well as

cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

On washing machines!

He's a pretty low-class tyrant, but a tyrant all the same, and I'd like to see him go.