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imperial presidency

American  

noun

(sometimes initial capital letters)
  1. a U.S. presidency that is characterized by greater power than the Constitution allows.


Etymology

Origin of imperial presidency

First recorded in 1970–75

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Its authors—Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, veteran White House correspondents for the New York Times—promise nothing less than to take us “inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump.”

From The Wall Street Journal Jun. 26, 2026

You can almost see in this an inexorable battle between the imperial court and the imperial presidency that the court itself created.

From Slate May 16, 2025

"In Tanzania we have something called an imperial presidency," she said.

From BBC Sep. 24, 2024

Even Richard M. Nixon, inventor of the so-called imperial presidency, was made to understand this in the end.

From Washington Post Aug. 13, 2022

The term "imperial presidency" was coined by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a Kennedy adviser who published a book by that name in 1973.

From Fox News Dec. 22, 2019

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