America’s system of checks and balances might struggle to contain a despot

THE most troubling interpretation of the executive order that Donald Trump signed on January 27th, temporarily banning visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries, is not that the president means to honour his campaign promises. It is that he will find ways to do so even where what he promised—in this case, to keep Muslims out of America—is illegal. “When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban’,” explained Rudy Giuliani, a former would-be Trump attorney-general. “He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally’.”

Even if Mr Trump can resist the urge to lock up Hillary Clinton and reinstitute torture, which he also promised to do on the trail, he is already testing the boundaries of presidential propriety and power. The potential conflicts of interests in his administration are an obvious example: Mr Trump is the first president since Richard Nixon not to sell or place in blind trust his business, including a hotel division that has announced plans to triple its American properties since his inauguration.