The Wall Fiasco Now Illustrates All the Most Essential Elements of Trumpism

[marmar]

from Esquire:


The Wall Fiasco Now Illustrates All the Most Essential Elements of Trumpism
The utter disregard for reality, the hostility towards democracy, the lying, the chauvinism, the enablers, the cruelty, the vindictiveness. It's all there.


t is fast becoming wingnut dogma that the President of the United States should hock a loogie on the Constitution to get a win on The Wall. Quite simply, there is no "national emergency" at the border. There is a humanitarian crisis that Trump administration policies have exacerbated, but there is no "invasion." Donald Trump, American president, admitted this Wednesday when he said his threshold for declaring an emergency was if he couldn't make a deal with Democrats to get Wall funding. If there's actually a national emergency going on, surely there's no time to wait! It almost sounds like declaring an emergency has nothing to do with the reality on the ground, that the emergency is Trump might lose in these negotiations, and that this is merely a threat from the president in order to get some leverage in those negotiations because he currently has none.

Of course, his genius-brain disciples are fully on board with the United States president abusing the powers vested in him to get a Win with The Base. Fabricating an emergency to seize funds not appropriated by Congress—a clear violation of the Constitution's separation of powers—is a lawless and nakedly authoritarian act. Yet Lindsey Graham, a man who used to call Trump a "kook" who was "unfit for office," now thinks he should seize extraordinary executive powers under false pretenses. What happened to that guy?

And then there's Lou Dobbs, the Benjamin Button stunt-double who hosts a show on the Fox Business Network. Dobbs has decided to embrace the rhetoric and methods of full-on authoritarianism.

Dobbs: Trump should "declare a national emergency, and simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country"
— Brendan Karet 🚮 (@bad_takes) January 11, 2019

Just sweep aside democracy while you're at it, Lou.

Remember: the president shut down the government single-handedly. Senate Republicans passed a bill to keep government open in December, and Paul Ryan was ready to get it through the then-Republican House. But it didn't include Wall funding, and Rush Limbaugh started saying mean things about Trump on the television, so our president went nuclear and refused to sign anything without funding for the Big, Beautiful Middle Finger From White America Monument. Since Democrats took control of the House, they passed a bill similar to the Senate Republican bill. Mitch McConnell refuses to put a bill his caucus essentially already passed up for another vote, because that would put Trump in the position of having to veto a bill to reopen the government—thus illustrating the simple reality that it is the president who is holding the government hostage. ..............(more)

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25856572/trump-wall-national-emergency-seize-puerto-rico-funds/

[empedocles]

1. We are so fortunate to live in an Age, where so many perspectives, so

much understanding is available. Those knowings can help us, in seeing how things work/happen in the world, - better face up to realities, and sometimes even feel more comfortable in our environment.

[Having some sense of how we survived the Civil War, here and two World Wars, gives me more hope that our country will survive traitortrump in some workiing fashion].