A recent poll found 65% of Americans considered President Donald Trump to be conservative or very conservative.

That I do not understand. Trump is the opposite of a conservative. A conservative conserves, maintaining what is good and just and building upon it. Donald Trump is no conservative; he is a destroyer.

For over two centuries, the bedrock of American conservatism has been our Constitution, the world's oldest single-document constitution governing a sovereign nation. It has served the country in its growth from 13 states to 50, from 4 million to 340 million people. As the great orator and senator Daniel Webster said in 1830: "Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again."

Trump is not holding on to the Constitution. He ignores, undermines and violates its provisions at every turn.

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power "to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises" and "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." Trump has imposed tariffs unilaterally on friendly nations such as Mexico and on economic rivals such as China. He has imposed tariffs on Canada in retaliation for a free-trade advertisement run by the province of Ontario and on Brazil in response to a court ruling that its former president had plotted a military coup.

The 14th Amendment gives citizenship to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Back in 1898, the Supreme Court's Wong Kim Ark decision made its meaning clear: If you're born in America, you're an American citizen even if your parents are not. Nevertheless, on the first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order that would take away the right from certain children born to noncitizen mothers. In upholding an injunction against Trump's order, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "It... has been more than a century since a branch of our government has made as concerted an effort as the Executive Branch now makes to deny Americans their birthright."

The Constitution's Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Nevertheless, federal agents have rounded up and arrested American citizens and permanent residents and even deported them. In one such case, the Fourth Circuit unanimously found, "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order."

Trump has refused to spend funds enacted in law by Congress, despite the Constitution's command to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" and a 1972 statute that regulates any refusal to use authorized appropriations. When President Richard Nixon tried to reduce moneys allocated to New York City, the Supreme Court ordered the full sum to be paid. The Trump administration pays precedent no mind and is withholding authorized funding for transportation, clean energy, school lunches, scientific research, education, public broadcasting, disaster response and foreign aid. These cuts have been challenged by states, cities and other groups in over 150 lawsuits.

Trump has demanded a payment of $230 million from the government for the cases the government brought against him for stealing classified documents and for harassing him during the 2020 election, among other things. As Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have pointed out, the Constitution "categorically prohibits the President from receiving any payment from the federal government beyond his $400,000 annual salary."

Consider just a few more examples: foreign money funneled through Trump's cryptocurrency ventures, war-making against Venezuela without a vote in Congress and the president taking over the National Guard, even though the Constitution says it's Congress' job to deploy the Guard "to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions."

The Republican Congress is taking no significant steps to stop Trump's unconstitutional actions. Nor — so far at least — is the Supreme Court.

In a metaphor that is almost too spot-on to cite, Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the White House. He is doing the same to the Constitution.

In English legend, Mordred brings about the destruction of King Arthur's Camelot. In Norse legend, Loki brings about the destruction of Asgard, the realm of the gods. In real life, will Americans allow Trump to bring about the destruction of what conservative icon Ronald Reagan — quoting the 17th century Puritan John Winthrop — called a "shining city upon a hill"?

Perhaps. What took 250 years to build, Trump has gone a long way toward destroying in nine months.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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