Is Donald Trump a “legitimate” president? Yes and no — it depends what we mean by that
On strictly constitutional grounds, yeah, he won the election. But Trump's political legitimacy is highly dubious
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(Credit: AP/Richard Shiro/Shutterstock/Salon)In calling Donald Trump an “illegitimate” president in an interview last Friday, Rep. John Lewis brought out into the open a debate that had been simmering among partisans and the angry hordes on social media since November’s election. Given the split between the popular vote and the Electoral College, to say nothing of the contentiousness of the campaign, the question of what we even mean when we engage in the “legitimate vs. illegitimate” debate with regard to Trump’s election was bound to boil over at some point.
What makes this such a fraught debate, aside from the anger aroused in an election winner’s supporters by calling him illegitimate, is the nebulous nature of the charge and the way it has been thrown at Trump’s predecessors. In President Obama’s case, for instance, conservatives liked to toss around the “illegitimate” charge by claiming he was not born in America, or that ACORN stuffed the ballot boxes, or some other nutty conspiracy theory. Such accusations are what Orin Kerr called “a broader rhetorical strategy of delegitimizing those on the other side that has found a lot of currency on the political right since Obama was elected.”
In short, labeling a president “illegitimate” has become a little like calling all news you don’t like “fake news.” You may not like a particular story on CNN, but that does not make it phony. So to call Trump illegitimate and not sound like the mirror image of the right-wing echo chamber, liberals need to make the distinction between political and legal legitimacy.
In legal terms, as defined under our Constitution, Trump is about to become the legitimate president. He won the majority of votes in the Electoral College, at which point the ballgame was over. We can yell all we want about some of the factors beyond the control of the Hillary Clinton campaign that went into his snagging some of these states. We can be angry about voter suppression laws that helped Trump win some of those states, but may still be judged unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the near future, for example. Or we can complain that Clinton was hurt by misinformation allegedly injected into the public sphere by a Russian propaganda campaign that influenced people to pull the lever for Trump.
But in the strictest legal sense, none of that matters. Under the conditions on the ground on Nov. 8 — rules understood by all parties in advance — Trump won the election. There is no constitutional avenue for a do-over of the vote, and no court is going to strike down the result and install Clinton into office. Even if John Lewis’ reasons for calling Trump illegitimate stem directly from the alleged Russian disinformation campaign.