Guidelines at best

Trump says he’s not sure if he has to uphold the Constitution… because he has “brilliant lawyers.”

Let’s be clear, Donald — you twice took an oath of office, pledging to:

“faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and… to the best of [your] Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

So what are you now saying?

  • That you don’t remember the oath of office — and in particular, those 9 words out of the 35 total in the oath? (But Joe Biden was too old...)
  • That you don’t think they apply to you?
  • That your brilliant lawyers are smarter than any of the Founding Fathers, so they should be able to come up with a technicality that will release you from anything you promised (twice)?
  • That the Constitution — the document that has guided this country for the last 236 years — somehow doesn’t apply to you?
  • That your personal feelings or political agenda should determine who deserves constitutional protection?
  • That people knew you said in 2022 the country might need to "terminate" parts of the Constitution, and they voted for you anyway — so now you should be able to ignore it?
  • That your understanding of constitutional law is as shallow as your grasp of most matters essential to leading a democracy?
  • That, to paraphrase Hector Barbossa, the Constitution is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules?

You say — we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials. “We have thousands of people — some murderers, some drug dealers, some of the worst people on Earth.”

So let’s examine that:

  • If we’re talking about thousands of people, why would we need 3 million trials? Math isn’t really my thing, but if we have 2,000 people and need 2 or 3 million trials, that’s like 1,500 trials per person. If you remember, Mr. President, you were convicted of 34 felonies in 1 trial — but I guess with you, math is just a concept as well.
  • Even if we’re talking about 1 trial per person, you claim there are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. If you plan to deport them all, then by your own admission, even if you had trials, the vast majority of those you’d deport — by your own estimate — would not receive due process.
  • So, because you’ve labeled these people as undesirable, due process should be bypassed, because it would take too much time?
  • That “we don’t have time for trials” is a valid argument for stripping rights in a democracy?

If this is your defense, then it’s not just a legal question — it’s a civic crisis. A constitutional crisis.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mandates, Myths, and Manufactured Fear

With the current unrest in Los Angeles, most news reports have recently begun by implying in some way that Trump received a mandate to enact mass deportations. First and foremost, that is patently untrue, starting with the fact that Trump did not receive a mandate; he did not win by a simple majority, but rather a plurality. To define a plurality as a mandate is a distortion of the language, a betrayal of democratic clarity, and a dishonest political strategy to falsely claim broad public endorsement. Beyond that, Trump’s stated reason for mass deportation was supposed to be to “restore law and order,” and that he would only deport the most violent and dangerous criminals. According to The Daily Beast , Stephen Miller explicitly ordered “ICE to conduct raids targeting undocumented day laborers at Home Depot parking lots” and stressed arresting all undocumented individuals, not just criminals, setting quotas of about 3,000 arrests per day and threatening to fire officials who didn’t...
Read more

Reduce vocabulary, and you reduce the capacity for complex thought

A few years ago on Valentine’s Day, I sang in a Barbershop Quartet for a friend’s kindergarten class. When we finished, one of the children — without being prompted — exclaimed, “That was expensive.” We took it as a sincere and generous compliment. After all, this little girl had reached deep into the recesses of her vocabulary and offered us the highest praise she could muster, based on three years of socialization and maybe six months of formal education. That was acceptable — even touching — coming from a four-year-old. Unfortunately, the President of the United States seems to have only a slightly larger vocabulary than that kindergartener. At best, he speaks at a fourth-grade level. When confronted by a journalist or anyone he considers an adversary, his responses are rarely more nuanced than, “That was a nasty question,” or “You’re not being very nice.” How far away are we from "nanny nanny boo boo?" We've gone from "Ask not what your country can do for you...
Read more

Who called that ______ a piccolo player?

From Insider Trading to Conspiracy Theories: Trump’s Cabinet Reveals a Dangerous Trend — Loyalty First, Leadership Last Of all the qualified Republican politicians and public servants — and let's be honest, even a few outside the party — you have to wonder: Why does Donald Trump continually scrape the bottom of the barrel when assembling a Cabinet? Most of these people aren’t just underqualified to lead the organizations they're supposed to oversee — but in the words of Robin Harris: Who called that muthafucker a piccolo player? Here’s the lineup: Marco Rubio – Secretary of State Criticized for hawkish foreign policy toward Latin America, China, and Iran. Received a 0/100 rating from the Human Rights Campaign for his voting record on LGBTQ+ rights. Pete Hegseth – Secretary of Defense Shared classified military information over unsecured messaging apps. Accused of sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse. Proposed renaming the Department of Defense to...
Read more