Every time I try to be mad at Trump, the media reel me back in by launching some ridiculous, unprovoked attack. This time, it’s the fake news story about Trump “leaking” classified information to the Russkies.
The president can’t “leak” classified information: It’s his to declassify.
The big secret Trump allegedly revealed is that Muslims might try to blow up a plane with laptops. I already knew that. I read it in The New York Times.
The New York Times, March 22, 2017:
Devices Banned on Some Planes Over ISIS Fears
Intelligence showing that the Islamic State is developing a bomb hidden in portable electronics spurred the United States and Britain on Tuesday to bar passengers from airports in a total of 10 Muslim-majority countries from carrying laptop computers … two senior American counterterrorism officials said. …
This totally secret, Deep Throat-level information has been widely published in thousands of news outlets throughout the civilized world. There was yet another round of stories last week with the update that the U.S. is considering a laptop ban on flights from Europe as well.
Hey, you know what might make more sense than banning laptops? How about banning Muslims?
Bear with me here, I’m still working out the details, but I’m almost certain a federal judge in Hawaii can’t block a president’s temporary ban on Muslim immigration just because he’s testy with Trump over some campaign statements.
As Northwestern law professor Eugene Kontorovich explained in The Washington Post, courts have never examined a politician’s campaign statements for improper motive, because 1) campaigns are not part of the deliberative process; and 2) to start doing so would open the door to “examinations of the entire lives of political officials whose motives may be relevant to legal questions.”
Nonetheless, Kontorovich says, that is the legal argument being advanced against Trump’s travel ban: “Trump is a bigot, and thus his winning presidential campaign in fact impeaches him from exercising key constitutional and statutory powers, such as administering the immigration laws.”
To preserve their judicial coup, this Monday, the 9th Circuit sent out the geriatric ward to hear an appeal of the Hawaii judge’s absurd ruling. At their ages, there’s a good chance the judges will be dead by the time the Supreme Court overturns them.
Arguing against Trump’s exercise of his constitutional and statutory powers was first-generation American, Neal Katyal. (There are plenty of 10th-generation America-haters. You couldn’t get one of them to argue that we should end our country through mass immigration?)
At oral argument before the three wheezing gargoyles, Katyal announced that, before enforcing federal immigration laws passed by generations of Democrats and Republicans working together in Congress, the president of the United States is required to profess: “Islam is peace.”
There’s a new legal principle!
Asked by one of the crypt-keepers if Trump is the only president who would be prohibited from issuing this precise travel ban because of his statements about Muslims, the smarmy, preening, pretentious Katyal answered: “I think the most important point is, if you don’t say all these things, you never wind up with an executive order like this.”
As lawyers say: Nonresponsive!
But as long as we’re operating under these new rules for determining a U.S. president’s rights and responsibilities, how about looking at everything Trump has said about Muslims?
For example, may the courts consider this quote from September 2015?
Trump: “I love the Muslims. I think they are great people. … Would I consider putting a Muslim-American in my Cabinet? Oh, absolutely. No problem with that.”
Lawyers like Katyal aren’t telling the courts what Trump said; they’re telling courts their own crazy interpretations of what Trump said. No liberal is capable of accurately reporting Trump’s position because the left never understood his position in the first place. As Peter Thiel said, the media take Trump literally, but not seriously, while the people take him seriously, but not literally.
After the San Bernardino terrorist attacks in December 2015, Trump made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that we curtail our breakneck importation of Muslims, some of whom periodically erupt in murderous violence. The media concluded: TRUMP HATES MUSLIMS! Nothing Trump or anyone else said could persuade them otherwise.
Here’s what Trump actually said:
What’s happened is, we’re out of control. We have no idea who’s coming into our country. We have no idea if they love us or if they hate us. … I have friends that are Muslims. They are great people. But they know we have a problem. They know we have a real problem. ‘Cause something is going on. And we can’t put up with it, folks. …
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. … Where the hatred comes from and why — we’ll have to determine, we’re going to have to figure it out. We have to figure it out. We can’t live like this. It’s going to get worse and worse. You’re going to have more World Trade Centers. …
Throughout the campaign, Trump supporters tried in vain to explain the so-called “Muslim ban” to a hostile media dead set on interpreting everything out of Trump’s mouth in the ugliest possible way. For example, our general policy on Muslim immigration would be “No, thanks!” but there would be exceptions. So Charles Krauthammer can stop worrying about King Abdullah of Jordan.
In March, Trump supporter Andy Dean told a dense CNN anchor:
He’s talking about the culture of Islam in the Middle East. … We love Muslims in America and they love us. Why? We have a great culture that respects women’s rights. … The thing about Muslims in the Middle East is they don’t respect women’s rights. If a woman wants to get a divorce in the Middle East, that woman could be killed. If you want to leave the religion of Islam in the Middle East, you can be killed. It’s very real.
To the same blockhead anchor, Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany had to fill in an edited quote the network had just shown of Trump:
It’s important to know what happened 15 seconds later. Anderson Cooper said to him, ‘Are you speaking of radical Islam or are you speaking of Islam?’ He said radical; sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, though. So he did say radical Islam. He said it repeatedly during his campaign. He said, ‘I have Muslim friends. I love the Muslim people.’ …
One of Trump’s vast number of African-American supporters told HLN’s Drew Pinksy:
I love what (Trump) is doing with the Muslims getting out of the country, because if they really knew what that was about — if they knew that that was about freedom. It was about freedom versus enslavement.
He’s right. It’s not about religion. It’s not about nationality. It’s about hitting the pause button on bringing in radical Islam’s dysfunctional, misogynist, violent, exploding-airplane culture.
The voters understood Trump. (At least some of us did — barely enough of us to elect him president!) Liberals didn’t. But now the courts are blocking Trump’s exercise of presidential powers based on the left’s own idiotic misinterpretations of what he said.
