Trump Just Threw His Staff Under The Bus In Twitter Rant That May Doom Travel Ban Legally
Like a petulant child who would rather stick a thumb in the eye of a parent than prevent permanent personal injury, President Trump’s willful self-destruction took a newly defiant form this morning.
After weeks of White House aides insisting that, despite Trump tweets that seemed to contradict them, the President’s Muslim travel ban was not really a travel ban at all. His staff’s efforts have been deemed legally necessary for Trump to retain any remaining hope of reviving his unconstitutional bans in the Supreme Court.
When is a travel ban not a travel ban? Trump WH in their own words. pic.twitter.com/xZo6ntGCJI
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) June 5, 2017
Rather than work with his team for the solution he wanted, the President undermined them and sabotaged his own goal with four early morning tweets, starting with this:
People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
Seemingly determined to cover every self-destructive angle, Trump then added another legally damning statement, again calling the ban a “watered down” version of the first one, which the New York Times reported “made it harder for his lawyers to argue that it was a clean break from the earlier one.” On top of that, the President is attacking the Justice Department in these next tweets for an executive order that he himself signed:
The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court – & seek much tougher version!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
In his final tweet, the President attacks the very courts who will decide the fate of his Muslim travel ban:
In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
The sad irony of this is that while the President simultaneously fights for and sabotages his travel ban under the guise of keeping our country safe, he is doing nothing to prevent actual attacks and has inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.
In the end we may be saved from the President’s destructive agenda, at least in part, by his own incompetence. While that may mitigate the damage however, it makes his acts no less shameful.
Sheila Norton is a writer with ten years of Capitol Hill experience. Subscribe to the OD Action email to get all the hottest news delivered right to your inbox every day at www.odaction.com