"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
It is not news that the Republican Party has a stagnant governing agenda cobbled together from the long-discredited dogmas and shibboleths of the conservative movement. “The current iteration of the G.O.P. is indifferent to the substance of government,” Steve Benen, a political writer and producer for The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, writes in “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics”:
It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized or implemented.
What is news is the extent to which the Republican Party has embraced the trappings of its leader, which is to say, the trappings of a right-wing cable news network: a nonstop parade of conspiracy, demagogy and grievance, in service to a cult of personality, all for the sake of a politics of plunder, theft and extraction.
**************
Read the rest of Jamelle’s op-ed at the link.
Pretty good explanation of The Party of Trump (formerly known as “The Party of Lincoln”).
My question is why the so-called “mainstream media” (excluding Jamelle and a few others) handles with “kid gloves” folks like Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Melania, who go on national TV and present knowingly bogus, totally disingenuous, fabricated portraits of Trump as a benign presence in U.S. politics. In a vain, continuing search for “normalization” of overt 21st century Jim Crow nationalist fascism, the “mainstreams” appear ready to credit speaking in complete, largely grammatical, sentences in the English language and not screaming racist tropes or absurdist internet conspiracy theories as all that is necessary to be considered “credible” and a “moderating force” in today’s “Trumpized” GOP!
The disingenuous treatment by the “mainstreams” of dishonest attempts to “soften” Trump’s true “Mini-Mussolini” persona as election-season gimmick is a gross dis-service to the public welfare and the abdication of the duty of courageous independent journalism to provide critical coverage — not just regurgitate RNC propaganda!
Why are “the mainstreams” rolling over for the RNC?
This November, vote like your life and the future of the world depend on it! Because they do!
Nikki Haley used to be known as the other member of President Trump’s Cabinet who left with an intact reputation (in addition to former defense secretary Jim Mattis). In an administration more influenced by Recep Tayyip Erdogan than Ronald Reagan, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations often provided a more traditional rhetorical take on American foreign policy. Haley seemed genuinely to care about human rights and democracy, and to somehow get away with displaying such caring in public. Her confidence in national principles marked her as such a freakish exception that some speculated she might be the rogue, anti-Trump Trump official who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times.
But Trump’s corruption still pulls at a distance. Clearly convinced that Trumpism is here to stay, Haley has publicly turned against other officials in the administration who saw the president as a dangerous fool. She recounts an hour-long meeting with then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who “confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country.” The conspirators (in Haley’s telling) considered it a life-and-death matter. “This was how high the stakes were, he and Kelly told me. We are doing the best we can do to save the country, they said. We need you to work with us and help us do it.”
Haley, by her own account, refused to help. “Instead of saying that to me, they should’ve been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan,” she now explains. “It should’ve been, ‘Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing.’ But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing.”
Here Haley is confusing two categories. If a Cabinet member has a policy objection of sufficient seriousness, he or she should take that concern to the president. If the president then chooses against their position — and if implementing the decision would amount to a violation of conscience — an official should resign. Staying in office to undermine, say, a law or war you disapprove of would be a disturbing arrogation of presidential authority.
But there is an equally important moral priority to consider: If you are a national security official working for a malignant, infantile, impulsive, authoritarian wannabe, you need to stay in your job as long as you can to mitigate whatever damage you can — before the mad king tires of your sanity and fires you.
This paradox is one tragic outcome of Trumpism. It is generally a bad and dangerous idea for appointed officials to put their judgment above an elected official’s. And yet it would have been irresponsible for Mattis, Kelly, Tillerson and others not to follow their own judgments in cases where an incompetent, delusional or corrupt president was threatening the national interest.
Consider the case of former White House counsel Donald McGahn. According to the Mueller report, McGahn complained to then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that Trump was trying to get him to “do crazy s–t.” McGahn (thankfully) told investigators he ignored presidential orders he took to be illegal.
Or consider a negative illustration. When it came to pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, the only morally mature adults in the room (and on the phone) were quite junior in rank. They expressed their concerns upward. But those above them — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — had learned the lesson about officials fired for an excess of conscience. They apparently looked the other way as a friendly country was squeezed for political reasons.
On the whole, I’m glad that responsible officials such as Kelly and Mattis stayed as long as they did to prevent damage to the country. But I also think they have a moral obligation to come out before the 2020 election and say what they know about Trump’s unfitness. If Biden is the nominee, they might even get together and endorse him. But, in any case, if they believe Trump is a danger to the national interest, they eventually have a duty to say something. Saving the country requires no less.
As for Haley, she has now signaled to Trump Republicans that she was not a part of the “deep state,” thus clearing away a barrier to ambition. All she had to do was to ignore her conscience, betray her colleagues and injure her country. A small price to pay for such a brilliant political future.
******************************
Haley’s ridiculously disingenuous performance on Today when grilled by Savannah Guthrie about the facts was worthy of her new role model, “Don the Con.”
Although you wouldn’t know it from the sycophantic Haley, political appointees, including Cabinet Members, actually take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the U.S., not the President. They are also first and foremost public servants paid by the People, not personal retainers of Trump as Haley, Barr, Pompeo, and others have functioned. I’d actually put Kelly and Tillerson in that category too; they certainly made a mess out of things at DHS and State, respectively, by putting the President’s xenophobic political policies before the law and the public interest.
And, if they in fact thought the President was endangering the U.S., they have kept it a secret after leaving. Compare these tawdry performances with those of the career public servants who have spoken out about Trump’s misdeeds even at the likely cost of their careers. And, unlike the stream of political appointees who have left in various stages of disgrace, they probably don’t have lucrative private sector jobs and/or fat book contracts awaiting them.
Expect Haley to “repackage herself” as a “powerful woman” and eventually as a Presidential candidate. She should be met with the same contempt as Kirstjen Nielsen and the few otherGOP women who penetrated the Trump GOP’s “White Men Only Club” only to choose pandering to its corrupt leader over the welfare of our nation and advancement of humanity.
President Trump’s suddenly discovered moral outrage over the gassing of Syrian civilians and his hasty resort to military force seems odd in light of his studied indifference, and even demonization, of millions of desperate Syrian refugees in need of resettlement in America and the West. Pelting Syria with missiles is likely to kill some innocent civilians as well as Assad supporters and Russians. But, helping Syrians in need who actually managed to flee the country would be a sure-fire way of saving the lives of civilians, many of them women and children, enriching United States, taking pressure off our allies in the region with overflowing refugee camps, and showing some moral leadership to other Western nations who are wavering in their humanitarian commitments.
Here’s a clip from HuffPost showing how UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, notwithstanding her pictures of gassed Syrian kids, had no answer for why the U.S. is failing to fulfill its humanitarian responsibility to take a fair share of Syrian refugees.
HuffPost reports:
“Earlier on Wednesday, Haley gave a fierce speech at the United Nations condemning the Syrian regime and its Russian ally.
“How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” Hayley asked at the meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Despite Hayley’s comments, it’s unclear what response the U.S. is considering in the wake of the attack. Trump said during a joint press conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Wednesday that Tuesday’s attack had changed his attitude toward the Assad regime and the country’s ongoing civil war. Just last week, the Trump administration had signaled it would no longer push for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s removal.
But neither Hayley nor Trump addressed whether Tuesday’s atrocity changed anything toward the president’s stance on Syrian refugees. Though there are already stringent requirements for refugees to enter the U.S., Trump repeatedly said during the presidential campaign that he considered Syrian refugees a terrorist threat.
After taking office in January, Trump signed an executive order on immigration that blocked admission to the U.S. for all refugees for 120 days and for Syrian refugees indefinitely, while also cutting the goal for refugee admissions this fiscal year from 110,000 to 50,000. The ban was later struck down in court. The implementation of a revised version of the executive order, which didn’t single out Syrian refugees but still blocked admission of all refugees for 120 days and decreased the total number of refugees to be admitted, was also halted in court.
At one point during Haley’s exchange with Van Susteren, a woman sitting in the mezzanine yelled out: “What about refugees?”
Haley went silent. Van Susteren paused, and then said, “Moving on.” The subject of refugees did not come up again.
. . . .
Haley’s talk came directly after a panel on the weaponization of medical care in Syria, in which two doctors asked those in the audience to start caring about Syrian doctors, civilians and refugees.”
*************************************
The sad fact is that the dead children in Syria are dead. Neither missiles nor recriminations about failed Obama Administration policies will bring them back to life. But, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of still alive Syrian kids in refugee camps whose lives can be saved and who need our help. Sooner, rather than later.
