White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told CNN on Monday that President Trump possesses "plenary authority" — a legal term meaning "unlimited power" that typically only appears in dissertations about authoritarianism and North Korean constitutional documents.
Miller made the claim while defending the deployment of National Guard troops, stating "Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, the president has plenary authority" before apparently short-circuiting mid-sentence in what viewers described as "the exact moment his brain remembered the Constitution exists."
The revelation that Trump's top advisor believes the president has limitless authority came as a surprise to approximately nobody, though legal scholars were startled that Miller just said it out loud on television like a Bond villain explaining his entire plan before the third act.
"Finally, someone's being honest," said one constitutional law professor who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being deployed to Portland against his will. "We've been dancing around this for months. They think he's a king. They've always thought he's a king. Now they're just skipping the foreplay and going straight to 'Dear Leader has unlimited power.'"
The phrase "plenary authority" — which Cornell University's Legal Information Institute defines as power that is "wide-ranging, broadly construed, and often limitless for all practical purposes" — immediately began trending on social media, with most Americans Googling "plenary" and discovering it's not a typo of "planetary."
When pressed about whether this interpretation of presidential power might, you know, completely contradict the separation of powers established in 1787, Miller reportedly responded by listing other leaders with plenary authority, including "very strong leaders, very respected, like Chairman Kim, President Putin, and that Turkish guy Trump always compliments."
At press time, Miller was seen frantically highlighting passages in a children's pop-up book titled "What Is Democracy?" while muttering "there's gotta be a loophole in here somewhere."
