If a "pretend" minister or justice of the peace officiates at your wedding, you're not married.

[Atticus]

If a "pretend" university gives you a diploma, you have no degree and you are not a college graduate.

If you build your house with the approval of "pretend" building inspector, you may have to tear down a "noncompliant structure."

If a "pretend" president appoints judges to the Supreme Court and other federal courts--------------------?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. --------------then they're not really judges. They're imposters.

Just like that so-called "president."

[regnaD kciN]

2. The problem with this analogy...

...is that what makes those others "pretend" is that they have not been certified by the proper authorities. The current POTUS, by contrast, gained the requisite majority of electoral votes in an election that was certified by Congress. Those are the proper authorities in this case. We may all think that Trump is morally unfit to be president; we may argue that there were enough irregularities that the election should have been invalidated and/or that he ought to be impeached and removed; but the fact is he is the duly-chosen President of the United States by all objective standards, and, until he is removed by either impeachment/conviction, electoral defeat, or the end of his two-term limit, he is not the "pretend" president in any objective sense, and his judicial appointments remain valid, just as Nixon's did even after he was forced to resign.

[EffieBlack]

5. This.

He was certified as president by Congress and he was duly sword in as required by the Constitution.

Unfortunately, he's the president.

[Atticus]

6. And, if the "certification" was obtained by fraud and the intervention of a foreign power hostile to

our interests, does that matter?

Can we really say that a candidate who knowingly accepted the illegal assistance of an American adversary, violated every standard of decency previously expected of a presidential candidate AND lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes was "duly chosen"?

A great wrong has been committed against our nation; against our democracy; against us. Are we to simply accept it as a wrong without a remedy? I have never and will never accept Donald Trump as the RIGHTFULLY elected president of the United States. To do so would fly in the face if all the available evidence, the clearly worded but as yet unenforced laws and everything I understand about honesty, decency and integrity.

My post dealt solely with what I consider a moral issue: Can an invalid president make valid lifetime judicial appointments.

I vote NO.

[ProudLib72]

7. By any objective standard, our objective standard is crap

That is the issue here. The mechanisms by which we cast votes are flawed. The mechanism by which we apportion those votes (electoral college) is flawed. The mechanisms by which we can revoke appointment are flawed. I have to say that, if I were an alien objectively watching this shitstorm unfold from my spacecraft in orbit above D.C., I would be SMH.

[Codeine]

3. Sadly, he's as real as it gets. nt

[unblock]

4. In the first case, you do have a degree and you are a college graduate

It may be a degree from a non-accredited university, but it's still a degree.

Similarly, Donnie is a ridiculously terrible president and any appointment of his is likely to be lousy as he's inept and values personal and partisan loyalty and on-air charisma over experience and talent and heart.

But his appointments are still legal.

Sadly.