For more than 200 years, among the worst charges anyone could throw at an American president was that he viewed himself a king. Smash cut to Tuesday, when the White House X account marked King Charles III’s visit to Washington with a post of the British monarch alongside President Donald Trump. The caption? “TWO KINGS. 👑.”
It would be a mistake to dismiss the post as mere trolling from the same account that posted an artificial intelligence-generated magazine cover with the president’s face declaring “Long Live the King.” More than any of his predecessors, Trump’s blatantly autocratic governing style has invited comparisons between himself and Charles’ royal ancestors America rejected more than two centuries ago.
Kingship is not without its pitfalls.
With his attempts to place himself above the law, Trump has done little to beat the charges of monarchical aspirations. He has frequently placed himself — or attempted to place himself — above the other branches of the federal government and stifle any independent thought from within his administration. In doing so, the president and his supporters have tended to focus only on the supposed efficiency that authoritarianism brings with it.
Kingship is not without its pitfalls, though. Namely: When only one person is making all the decisions, there is only one person who can be blamed when everything is going wrong.
Trump won a second term in part thanks to the frustration Americans felt over inflation in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. He pointed to President Joe Biden as the cause of rising prices despite presidents (usually) having little power to directly affect the rate of inflation. But since returning to the White House, Trump’s signature economic policy has been unilateral, wildly volatile tariffs on imports. Likewise, the claims of “Donald the Dove” have given way to the deeply unpopular war with Iran that he launched unprompted more than two months ago.
In both cases, Trump wrested powers granted to Congress under the Constitution away from lawmakers to carry out his will abroad. After the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had misused the law to unilaterally apply his tariffs, he has worked to keep as many of them in place as possible. (His apoplectic response to the court’s ruling was just shy of asking someone to rid him of these meddlesome justices.) Prices on imports have remained high even as the supposed domestic manufacturing boom the tariffs were meant to stoke has fizzled.
Meanwhile, gas prices jumped to an average of $4.23 a gallon this week as the war with Iran has continued with no clear end in sight. The rising cost in fuel is only the first wave of economic pain from the war. The second is already on its way as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains choked off, presaging another bump in prices down the line from importers already struggling from the tariff regime.
The White House wasn’t built to be a palace.
Many of the checks the Founders intended to limit the president have effectively been silenced in the process. Instead of diligent advisers and serious legislators, the president is surrounded by courtiers and Privy Council members who are much more concerned with retaining the king’s approval than serving the country. Rather than focusing on the problems Americans face, including those originating with Trump himself, we’ve seen a rush to plaster his name and face on everything from theaters to passports, and an especially absurd focus on a grandiose ballroom.
The disconnect between the quasi-kingly mien of Trump’s rein and the reality of the country’s mood has never been clearer. As my colleague James Downie recently noted, in poll after poll, the president’s approval rating has tumbled across demographics. The tailspin has helped undercut the notion that nothing Trump does could ever break his hold on the GOP base, leaving lawmakers up for re-election this fall scrambling to forestall an electoral disaster.
Granted, Trump isn’t alone among chief executives in seeing his approval tank as economic strife rises. As the face of the government, and the only federal official elected nationwide, the president can easily act as a political punching bag for events outside of his control. But as Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush so aptly put it on Bluesky: “I don’t think there has ever been, in democratic times, an economic shock where you can point to a specific individual politician and go ‘it’s this guy’s fault’.”
The White House wasn’t built to be a palace. It was designed with no throne room and its previous occupants labored hard to avoid providing any whiff of kingly affectations. Trump’s approach to governance has instead embraced the notion that his word should be taken as law. But heavy is the head that wears the crown, even when covered in gilding and adorned with glass jewels. No matter the material, it is an ill-fit for any American president — and Trump’s royal conceit is roundly rejected by the people.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.