Clearly he’s heralding to the concept of martial law, which allows the president to declare a state of martial emergency, and possibly even suspend elections.

The precedent of Rome is apparent here, the senatus consultus ultimum, which enabled the consult (president) to take back the powers of the king, taken away from him upon the forming of the republic, in order to respond expediently to a crisis. These powers included imperium, the ability to use physical force (the root of our modern Empire) and judicium, the power to judge.

Although it can had actually been used for a good cause, especially in the hands of the statesman Cicero (against the Cataline Conspiracy), it was this law that Julius Caesar was able to exploit to become a dictator and end the republic.

After nearly 2,000 years of re-evolution, we have once again acquired this system, basing it on the classical one to a fault. Rather than basing it on the platonic, we’ve based it on the historical, and maintained this loophole in our own constitution.

This is the ideological precedent. In addition, the fabuously wealthy Bloomsberg seems to have acquired the right to do this from, of all people, a “cosmetics heir,” as he was described by the New York Post.