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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI just heard someone on CNN say ...
... with respect to Yates refusal to defend Trumps Muslim Ban, that paraphrasing here When the president decides that a group of people pose a threat to the nations security, he should be taken seriously. In other words, if Trump has decided that Muslims should be banned from entering the country, Yates was obligated to take his word for it and act accordingly.
That raises a myriad of obvious questions that the Republicans dont seem to have any answers for.
How seriously is a presidents word to be taken when that president, along with many of his closest advisors, are under investigation for possibly colluding with an adversarial foreign power in order to undermine our election process?
What weight is to be given to the word of a president who has repeatedly lied about everything from the size of his inauguration crowds, to insisting that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton, to accusations that a former president AND our allies allegedly spied on him all without proof, and often in spite of proof to the contrary?
How much trust is to be placed in a president whose only response to the serious allegations against his administration has been inane Tweets about fake news, baseless accusations levelled at anyone who so much as raises questions about his conduct, and has engaged in an endless attempt to shut down all efforts to get at the underlying facts?
How much credence is to be given to any decision made by a president who, by his own admission, signs executive orders drafted by others without reading them himself? How much credence is to be given to a president who backs legislation (e.g. the AHCA bill) apparently without knowing what that proposed legislation contains, or what its impact will be?
How seriously is a president to be taken when that president has demonstrated, over and over again, that he is ignorant of how our government operates, and is reliant on the very people under investigation for direction and advice?
There has not been a single day since Trumps swearing-in that he and his administration have not been steeped in scandal from his choice of advisors, to his placing of inexperienced and incompetent people in Cabinet positions, to his reliance on family members who are clearly more interested in enriching the Trump empire than they are promoting the interests of the citizenry.
To say that any presidents determination of who should be barred from entering the country must be taken seriously is to wilfully turn a blind eye to the obvious: Trump is NOT any president. The evidence is overwhelming that his decision-making is based on advice from people who are currently under investigation for possible collusion with Russia. The evidence is overwhelming that his own family members are advising him on how to use his office to line his pockets and theirs.
Yet again, this another attempt by Republicans to normalize a president who is far from normal. Normal presidents dont act like Donald Trump. Normal presidents dont repeatedly dismiss investigations into their administration as fake news. Normal presidents dont accuse their predecessor of criminal activity without a scintilla of proof. Normal presidents dont incessantly Tweet ludicrous nonsense in response to serious questions about their actions.
If you believe as I do, and as most people with a functioning brain do that Trump is completely abnormal by virtue of his own conduct, his own (often incoherent) words, his own bizarre statements, then you cannot point to what a president should or should not be taken seriously about.
It is bad enough that we, the citizenry, are being admonished by Republicans to accept a lying, self-serving Idiot as our POTUS and C-in-C. It is quite another to be told that he is normal, despite all evidence to the contrary, and should be given the same credence that a normal president would be given.
Donald Trump is going down. It may take months, it may take longer. That is the nature of investigations into those who wield political power. Just as it was with Nixon/Watergate, corruption at the highest levels of our government is not something that is proven overnight.
In the meantime, we Americans would be wise to take note of the political party that is intent on saying theres nothing to see here, and still supports a so-called president whose every action, every decision, every statement has been crafted to distract us from the realities of whats really going on.
I am trying to wrap my head around the idea that a major US political party is far more willing to protect a proven liar than it is willing to protect the nation, and the citizens whose interests they have sworn to serve.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,560 posts)J_William_Ryan
(1,749 posts)and enforce Trumps bigoted EO, as there was no doubt that Trumps intent was to ban Muslims from coming into the country based solely on an unwarranted, baseless fear of Muslims, in violation of the Constitution, where an AG is instead obligated to refuse to enforce an executive action which is prima facia un-Constitutional:
This problem of determining a collective bodys motives simply does not arise, however, when a single individual signs an executive order. So long as Donald Trump occupies the White House, his motivations are the only motives that matter theres no need for courts to engage in the admittedly quite difficult task of sorting through dozens of lawmakers statements to assess their motives.
Nor is it particularly difficult for judges to determine Trumps motives in this particular case, since the man literally spent the better part of two years bragging about his desire to ban Muslims on the campaign trail.
https://thinkprogress.org/racist-discredited-argument-trumps-doj-e1bfdbe03c09
It is obvious to any jurist of good faith that Trumps EO was clearly intended to ban Muslims from coming to the United States for no other reason than being Muslim.
ATL Ebony
(1,097 posts)MLAA
(17,266 posts)Nailed it.
orleans
(34,043 posts)and in case anyone still thinks my comment is serious:
Hekate
(90,616 posts)mnhtnbb
(31,377 posts)demanding his tax returns, doing everything possible to get to the bottom of the Russia connection, are all in violation
of their oaths of office.
It is obvious that these characters do not give a wit about the nation. They are in it for their own power and own self-serving interests.
malaise
(268,844 posts)THIS - and more than a few hacks in the media
raccoon
(31,106 posts)Because they have shown over and over that they put party before country. They don't even want to have townhalls to listen to what their constituents have to say if the constituents disagree with the GOP official party line.
RockaFowler
(7,429 posts)We are not a Dictatorship. He doesn't get to decide everything in this country
Mr. Ected
(9,670 posts)Then this tidbit from the WaPo is also applicable:
Then-President-elect Trump apparently took a warning from the sitting president of the United States not to hire a specific adviser and dismissed it as partisan politics ...
The Wizard
(12,541 posts)we had to know when a bullshit artist was trying to con us. But Trump is far beyond a bullshit artist. He's a menace to civilization and an unrepentant con man with a slew of victims in his wake. That his delusional supporters still support him is a credit to Pox News and hate radio and cause for us to spend more on education.
Gothmog
(145,046 posts)The issue raised in Nance's OP was a key element in the questions by the judges. One key element is the issue of whether one can ignore trump's past statements. It is always hard to predict how a court will rule after oral arguments and this issue will be addressed in the opinion