Dwain Northey (Gen )

Oh, absolutely, because everyone knows that executive orders are the exact same thing as laws—just scribble a signature, wave a pen, and voilà, Congress can go home, right? I mean, who even needs a legislative branch anymore when we’ve got the magical powers of executive orders? And let’s definitely pretend that Donald Trump wasn’t the first president to think of using them like royal decrees. Totally unprecedented.

Never mind that George Washington issued executive orders (but, you know, only eight), or that Franklin D. Roosevelt practically turned it into an Olympic sport with over 3,700 of them—Trump’s 220+ must be the biggest scandal in history. Because clearly, no other president has ever used executive authority to bypass gridlocked legislators or pander to their base. Nope, just Trump. Totally new.

And let’s definitely not mention that executive orders can be challenged in court or reversed by the next president. That’d spoil the fun of imagining Trump with unchecked monarchical power. So yes, let’s all clutch our pearls and act shocked—shocked!—that a modern president used the tools every modern president has used. Surely, democracy is hanging by a thread because of it.