In 1962, the John F. Kennedy administration did something similar. JFK ordered the IRS to investigate the tax exempt status of conservative broadcasters that were criticizing the administration. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1281616586273468416

The result was the IRS's "Ideological Organizations Project," which ultimately revoked the tax exempt status of several of Kennedy's radio foes. Even those who won their court challenges still ultimately lost b/c of the pressure on donors and legal costs.

The commissioner of the IRS at the time was Mortimer Caplin, an old law school prof of Robert Kennedy (then Attorney General). He'd helped RFK take down organized crime via the tax code and was happy to do the same with right-wing radio.

Frustratingly, the career IRS officials in the local offices kept rebuffing requests by the national office political appointees to investigate broadcasters, notably Billy James Hargis.

[Trump wasn't the only President to be annoyed by the "deep state."]

So the national office eventually took over the investigation themselves--which was highly unusual--and revoked Hargis's tax exemption. Hargis ultimately won in court...ten years later.

As the saying goes, "The power to tax is the power to destroy." And the history of the IRS is an almost unbroken line of one President after another abusing the taxing power for partisan advantage.

What is unusual about Trump's directive to the IRS is not that he made it, but that he's done it so openly. Usually Presidents try to hide their illegal orders, but not Trump.

Then again, if he gets enough pushback, his surrogates will probably pass it off as a joke.

But if he actually pursues universities' tax exempt status, this tweet all but guarantees his loss in the inevitable court challenge. It's his self-sabotaging tweets about the Muslim ban all over again. His incompetence belies his authoritarianism.

If you're interested in the story of the IRS's role in JFK's censorship campaign against right-wing radio, check out chapter three of my new book. https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Right-Broadcasters-Government-Conservative/dp/0190073225