Editor's note: Chris Hawke is a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a journalist who has reported for over two decades from Beijing, New York, the United Nations, Tokyo, Bangkok, Islamabad and Kabul for AP, UPI, and CBS. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

President Donald Trump has started acting like the Sunkist King.

Instead of declaring "I am the state" like the French Sun King Louis XIV, he is claiming, "the Supreme Court gave the president of the United States powers that nobody thought the president had."

The Supreme Court has slapped down the president's lawless ways on many occasions, most recently stopping Trump from dismantling the Dreamers program that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

However, the president is turning lemons into lemonade, concluding that this decision actually expands his powers.

Trump apparently drew this conclusion based on a legal analysis from John Yoo published in the National Review, criticizing the Supreme Court's Dreamer's decision.

Yoo argues that following the court's logic, Trump could create a nationwide right to carry guns openly, and declare he would not enforce federal firearms laws. Not only could he get away with this for the length of his presidency, his successor would need to go through a cumbersome process, taking years to repeal the plainly illegal law.

Yoo admits he has spoken to Trump about his idea. And the president seems to have taken it to heart.

Yoo is most famous for authoring the "Torture Memos" that justified the CIA's use of torture during the George W. Bush administration. Yoo's memos were repudiated by the Bush Justice Department, with the department's Office of Professional Responsibility concluding Yoo had "committed 'intentional professional misconduct.'" Mainstream legal opinion on Yoo's advice to Trump is similarly scathing.

Nonetheless, Trump has decided to test the limits of his power during his last five months in power.

He is acting beyond the law in matters both big and small. His dizzying rate of tweets and administrative actions is too fatiguing for even his political opponents to focus on. Consider these actions that would have been a major scandal in another administration: Trump considers banning American citizens from returning to their own country from Mexico, without a legal basis. Trump instructs the U.S. ambassador to Britain to press the UK government to hold the British Open golf tournament at his golf course in Scotland, which is on its face corrupt. Trump threatens to take away the tax exempt status of schools for teaching left-wing views – a power that belongs to Congress, not the president.

Of more serious concern is Trump's use of the Department of Homeland Security as his personal militia in order to highlight the "law and order" aspect of his campaign. Clearing away peaceful protesters from a church near the White House so he could stage a photo-op was just the beginning.

He prompted condemnation from the governor of Oregon and the mayor of Portland for the aggressive actions of Homeland Security agents at the Portland Federal Courthouse. In some cases, Black Lives Matter protesters were snatched off the streets on their way home blocks from the courthouse and carried off in unmarked vans. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court seeking a restraining order.

Continuing his cowboy approach, Trump recently warned of mandatory prison sentences for anyone who harms a federal monument. "If they even try, an automatic 10 years in prison. Sorry!" he tweeted, ignoring that laws are made by Congress and enforced by the judiciary, two co-equal branches of government to the executive branch that he leads.

Trump sounded more like the enforcer of a protection racket than a president as he pushed to shut down Tik Tok's operations in the U.S. He finally agreed to allow Microsoft to buy the company but added, "What the price is, the United States could – should get a very large percentage of that price. Because we're making it possible." It should go without saying there is no legal basis for the president to collect extortion money.

Trump's commuted the prison sentence of his political adviser Roger Stone, whose obstruction arguably prevented the president from being impeached. Republican Senator Mitt Romney tweeted: "Unprecedented, historic corruption: An American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president. "

Meanwhile, Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, was released from prison after a judge ruled he was put in jail again after being paroled as retaliation for writing a book that claims to detail illegal actions by the president.

Right now, Democrats are going into emergency mode over the president's apparent confession that he is aiming to strangle the Postal Service in order to thwart mail-in voting. Trump's top aides are walking back the president's remarks, and Republican members of Congress are distancing themselves from the scheme.

Some of Trump's other efforts to bypass the Constitution, such as funding a coronavirus relief package without cooperation from Congress, are bound to fail because they are unworkable.

As Trump finishes off his fourth year in office, he has managed to purge his administration of all people who might constrain his actions, replacing them with yes men such as Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, all the way down infamous lawyer Yoo and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who is removing mail sorting machines, restricting overtime and reducing Post Office business hours as it warns it cannot handle mail-in ballots.

In the end, it will be the American people who will decide in November if they want a king or a president. Trump's actions during this campaign period show a focus on "order," without too much concern for "law."

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