You got elected President. You just finished your inauguration speech and you almost utter “So I lied, sue me”. You don’t really care about the future. You’ll be impeached, in fact, that’s a goal. But what could you realistically do to get past the checks and balances, obstinate Congress, the judicial branch, etc?
Trying to be a little realistic. No assassinating world leaders just to start wars. Or going into the State of the Union Address with hand grenades.
But what havoc could you play with laws or budgets before everyone figured you out? Like in SimCity where you cut all budgets and raise the taxes just to watch the world burn. Your goal is to do the most damage before your eventual impeachment and legacy of infamy. Let’s assume you’d like to hold on for a little while, and are willing to be subtle and gradual.
*As an aside, what if I decided to just open up the nuclear football and press the red button? No maniacal laughter in front of TV, just simply opened and pushed it?
Yeah, I’m going with the nuclear football thing. I don’t know if even a president could get away with just hitting that button without warning though. I hope not.
Realistically, the President couldn’t wreak a lot of havoc, staffers would slowboat a lot of the crazy shit, then he’d get tranked and relieved via the 25th Amendment.
It’s not like the “football” is a mother of a remote. What it contains is a list of codes and authorization protocols for the release of nuclear weapons. There is no button to push. Any President who started issuing orders to do so would be taken out at once by his staff.
Ditto any extreme behaviors. There is too much of a cushion for crazy to get out.
Your best bet would be to go on national TV and state that the US will no longer support Israel and call for jihad.
Vetoing every law that comes across his desk would probably hurt, in the long run. Yeah, that can be overridden, but do you really think you can get two thirds of both houses to agree on anything?
What about just loading federal agencies with incompetents and waiting for a crisis to hit? Bush the Younger did this with FEMA and it was stunningly effective. That approach should be easy to scale up.
Fire all appointees who “serve at the pleasure of the President”, including the Cabinet, and refuse to delegate the authority to any acting Civil Servants who find themselves at the top of their departments. No one would have authority to do anything. Or appoint minions and henchpersons to all those jobs, and let them work their will.
Order the discharge of everyone in the military, as Commander in Chief.
During Watergate Nixon tried to up the nuclear preparedness level and the various staffs just ignored it.
The pardon power is very broad with respect to federal offenses. Theoretically he could pardon every federal crime committed up until the time he signed the universal pardon. But it would be ignored in practice.
The President presides over the executive branch of government. His appointees and he have the power to persuade, hire (sometimes with Senate approval) and fire. The late Al Davis had more personal power as owner of the Raiders than the President does over the US. And Al used it.
The Pres can launch military (if non-nuclear) attacks without Congressional approval. I’d be kind of curious to see what would happen if the Pres ordered airstrikes on Canada and Mexico. Oh, and England too, just for laughs.
Not a coup, but more likely a stand-down. Commanders receiving such orders would refuse to execute them pending approval from the rest of the chain of command, and the Staff would gently take the President to Bethesda for “observation.”
Even the most immediate ops order takes a lot of people and time to execute.
You need Senate approval to appoint all your minions and henchpersons, though, unless you want do to a whole bunch of recess appointments. But those are temporary.
I don’t think the President can discharge members of the military. He can relieve officers of their commands, but they’re still in the service. Only the military justice system can kick people out, in accordance with the UCMJ statutes written by Congress. Similarly, civil service bureaucrats can not be fired by the President; they can only be removed through the civil service personnel system, in accordance with the civil service statutes written by Congress.
All political appointees within the executive departments and White House offices can theoretically be fired. But there are lots of executive branch appointees at independent regulatory agencies that can’t be.
In any case, a President who pulls these kinds of stunts would likely find himself quickly impeached for dereliction of duty or some such. If you want to cause lots of immediate, irreversible damage, issuing pardons of all the worst federal criminals would be fun. You could also order all military press officers to give press conferences only after inhaling helium.