The Trump Administration Shot Itself in the Foot. Again.
I have to tell you, I am getting tired of all this winning.
On Wednesday night, the president* winged his way to another sparsely attended love fest, this one in Nashville. While he was airborne, his latest attempt at a Muslim ban got skinned alive by another federal court, courtesy of an action brought by the attorney general of Hawaii. From the BBC:
Judge Watson said the court had established a strong likelihood that, were the ban to go ahead, it would cause "irreparable injury" by violating First Amendment protections against religious discrimination. In his 43-page ruling, he argued that a "reasonable, objective observer" taking into account the context of the Executive Order would conclude it "was issued with a purpose to disfavour a particular religion".
And on what did Judge Watson base this conclusion? It was based on the fact that the president* has surrounded himself with creeps and morons. Well, not in so many words, but the judge's intent was clear.
It notes statements made by Mr Trump such as a 2015 press release calling for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States", and his adviser Rudolph Guiliani, who said in a television interview in January: "When [Mr Trump] first announced it, he said: 'Muslim ban'. He called me up. He said: 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.'"It also says there is a "dearth of evidence indicating a national security purpose". In his ruling, Judge Chuang wrote: "To avoid sowing seeds of division in our nation, upholding this fundamental constitutional principle at the core of our nation's identity plainly serves a significant public interest."
The judge also cited Stephen Miller, whom the administration occasionally allows out of the locked ward to comment about policy on national television. Nothing good ever comes of this. A while back on Fox News, Miller burbled that the new travel order would "have the same effect" as the old one. Nice call, Einstein. You certainly made the judge's job easier.
(By the way, one of the dissenters was Judge Jay Bybee, one of the Avignon Presidency's permanent gifts to the Republic whose views on civil liberties during his previous tenure in the Executive Branch were, ah, unique.)
So, naturally, having been handed his ass by a federal court that based its ruling partly on the fact that his spokespeople can't keep from running their yaps in counter-productive ways, the president* took to the podium and proceeded a) to trash the court that will hear his administration's appeal of this latest setback, and b) defend his current Muslim ban against charges that it is unconstitutional by announcing his preference for its previous iteration, which actually was declared unconstitutional. From The Tennessean:
"A judge has just blocked our executive order on travel and refugees coming in to our country from certain countries," he said. "The order blocked was a watered-down version of the first order. This ruling makes us look weak, which we no longer are."
(The crowd in Nashville was certainly a hoot. They chanted, "Lock her up!" the way that Springsteen crowds call for "Badlands," and they booed Hawaii. What kind of person boos Hawaii?)
How many feet can one man shoot himself in? Opinions vary.
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