Freak Out Friday – November 23, 2018

Since yesterday was turkey day, it makes sense to talk about our turkey of a president today. Let’s see what he’s been up to.

1). Disorder in the court. Trump dismissed a judge who ruled against his desire to ban migrants illegally entering the country from seeking asylum as an “Obama judge.” This is, of course, how Trump sees the world. He has no respect for the law in general and the constitution in particular, and figures that judges operate the same way. He assumes that if a judge is appointed under Obama, his rulings will all be governed by how Obama would want things done. Chief Justice John Roberts–a Republican–fired back in a rare public statement criticizing Trump, declaring that there are no Obama judges, no Trump judges, no Clinton judges, but rather justices who simply care about the law. Trump naturally fired back, declaring, “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have “Obama judges,” and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.” He of course offered absolutely no proof of this assertion. Naturally he didn’t need to. His followers blindly believe him, and as far as he’s concerned, any Obama-appointed judge who rules against him does so ONLY because Obama put him in place, rather than he is, you know, wrong.

Meanwhile, displaying their typical respect for the lower court, Trump’s people are trying to speed several cases challenging his banning of transgenders from serving in the military straight to the Supreme Court. They assume that the conservative court with two Trump appointees on it will fall in lockstep behind Trump’s desires. Will they be proven correct? We’ll have to wait and see, although the SCOTUS generally prefers to wait until cases work their way through the lower courts so they have the decisions and opinions of lower judges to consider and debate.

At the same time, a New York State judge dismissed Trump’s appeal against a lawsuit brought against his charitable foundation that has allegedly been violating tax laws for over a decade. Trump’s lawyers asserted that a sitting president could not be sued while failing to provide evidence (of course) that a president was immune from civil suits. Not to mention that the suit involves activities that he was up to long before the electoral college gave him the Oval Office. So not a good week for him judicially. Then again, when is it ever?

2). You remember Saudi Arabia, right? Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudis. And several intelligence agencies, including the CIA, are positive that the Saudi crown prince was responsible for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But not Trump; he continues to defend the crown prince because they buy stuff of his and that makes them swell guys in his book. And although he hasn’t said this, let’s face it: it’s not like they killed someone important. Just a journalist. Certainly a journalist isn’t worth making a big deal about.

Yet in a rare instance of bipartisan agreement, both Democrats and Republicans are shocked over Trump’s consistent refusal to take any actions, or even condemn, the Saudis. They’ve tolerated his cozying up to dictators like Putin or Kim Jong un, but this is a step too far. And you can bet that if Trump doesn’t change his tune, fast, one of the very first things the Dems will investigate come January is the reasons as to why he is coddling the Saudis. That should make for a very interesting investigation, one that even his supporters will find difficult to justify.

3). Justice for none. The New York Times broke a major story this week in which it turns out that a year or so ago, Trump wanted to order the Justice department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey. For what? Well, because they were critics of his and he didn’t like them. He apparently took the “lock her up” chants at his rallies as actually having force of law. Trump’s own top attorney, Don McGann, warned him that this was not only an unconstitutional move but one that was impeachable. On that basis Trump backed away from it, but still continued to bitch about it and advocate it in privacy.

This is of course the exact sort of thing a dictator does: use government forces to take out his opponents. In Russia or North Korea they would simply have enemies poisoned or shot or jailed. Trump would do that in a heartbeat if he could, but instead wanted to order the justice department to do it even though he simply cannot. The only thing that prevented him was concern that it would rebound to his detriment, which of course it would. That is the sort of huge idiot who currently sits in the White House.

Meanwhile the government just came out with a report agreeing that climate change is destroying the world. As of this writing, Trump hasn’t commented on it, but I think we can all agree he will likely continue to ignore it. He’s far more concerned about blaming the California forest fires on failure to rake leaves than the fact that the world’s temperature is slowly rising to unsafe levels.

Did he do anything right? Yes. He served Caesar salad at his Thanksgiving feast. Good. Maybe he ate it. The White House claimed there was no romaine lettuce in it, but we can always hope.

PAD