03.16.2017 09:20 AM

In next week’s column: campaigns may not matter, but words do

To wit:

Donald Trump – the combed-over, sphincter-mouthed, racist, sexist, fascistic Human Cheeto – showed all of us that Campaigns Don’t Matter.  You can run a really shitty one, like he did, and still win.

But.  But one thing, and it is deliciously ironic.  It is schadenfreude on a scale heretofore unseen in politics.  It is frigging beautiful.

You can see it in the decisions of federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii, issued late last week – but particularly in the must-read decision of Judge Derrick K. Watson, of Federal District Court in Honolulu.  In it, Judge Watson threw out Trump’s second (allegedly kinder and gentler) executive order seeking a Muslim ban.  And he did so by relying upon the words of Donald Trump himself.

Judge Watson dismissed the Trump regime’s claim that a court would need to probe the Unpresident’s “veiled psyche” to locate religious animus. Jusdge Watson would have none of it.  Repeatedly, he cited Trump statements that were helpfully found in the pages of the lawsuit brought by Hawaii’s attorney general.

“There is nothing ‘veiled’ about this press release,” Judge Watson wrote, quoting a Trump campaign document titled “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Said he: “A reasonable, objective observer would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavour a particular religion.” 

The general consensus, now, is that the short-fingered vulgarian – per Canadian Graydon Carter’s now-immortal phrase – will continue to be hoisted on his own petard.  As he labours to render the United States of America an Aryan Nation, Donald Trump will continue to lose in court.  That is now very clear, to every legal scholar and constitutional expert.

4 Comments

  1. Michael Teper says:

    Say that Donald Trump and Mike Pence were to resign tomorrow. Then Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, would become president. Say that the new President Ryan re-issues the executive order, word for word. At this point, there is no animus against Muslims. Paul Ryan has never made inflammatory statements about Muslim immigration. Would that make the Executive Order no longer in violation of the Establishment Clause? Does the constitutionality of an executive order depend on the character and prior campaign statements of its author?

    • Charlie says:

      Not a lawyer, but I think the operating factor in the stay of this ban is primarily that Trump and Co’s rhetoric during the campaign proves an insidious purpose.

      Having explicitly expressed intentions to ban people of a specific religious/ethnic background is what is the issue here from what I gather. So if Paul Ryan, as per your scenario, were to introduce the ban again but in a slightly re-formatted form, I don’t see how a judge could challenge a President Ryan’s ability to control who does and doesn’t enter the country under the guise of security. From what I gather, that is the President’s prerogative. The only resistance I think a new EO from a different POTUS could face is evidential basis for restricting entrance from these particular countries.

  2. Kevin says:

    From your mouth to God’s ears. But that raises another issue. If he continues to be thwarted in this way, and there is every indication he will be, will he be able to handle that without becoming even more unhinged and vindictive? The possibilities are frightening.

  3. dave constable says:

    I appreciate the wrangling out of this at the level of the White House and the courts. But I find bothersome all the reports of threats,harassment and violence at the community level. At least some of that violence is contributed to by these banning orders from pm high. The constant anti Islam/ anti Arab stuff that we have been getting the past decades has set the stage for ugly behaviour in communities.

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