Ankush Khardori in Politico Magazine:

The Supreme Court has been steadily building up an extraordinary level of immunity for presidents, on both civil and criminal fronts. And Trump has benefited from — and exploited — the law like no other president in American history.

Last year, in the case concerning his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to receive criminal immunity from prosecution — based on a previously nonexistent doctrine that has no credible basis in the Constitution’s text or the Framers’ expectations. The decision paved the way for Trump’s reelection….

Yet somehow, Trump is free to sue the [Wall Street] Journal over an unflattering story — this despite the fact that it concerns a subject that the Trump administration first placed into the public spotlight and which has attracted the public’s attention like virtually no other issue during Trump’s second term.

It does not make much sense that the president is too busy to defend against lawsuits but can go around filing his own. It means that Trump can use the law as both sword and shield, however he sees fit. But this fundamental incongruity in the law isn’t likely to change any time soon, especially under the current Supreme Court.