Contributors

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Trump's Worst Enemy: His Own Big Fat Mouth

Today Donald Trump suffered another humiliating loss on his Muslim ban:
A federal appeals court refused Thursday to reinstate President Trump’s revised travel ban, saying it “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.”

The decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., was a fresh setback for the administration’s efforts to limit travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.
Why? Because calling it a "Muslim ban" was de facto religious discrimination, something Trump blared over and over on the campaign trail:
Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory said Mr. Trump’s statements on the campaign trail concerning Muslims showed that the revised order was the product of religious hostility. Such discrimination, he wrote, violates the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion.

“Then-candidate Trump’s campaign statements reveal that on numerous occasions, he expressed anti-Muslim sentiment, as well as his intent, if elected, to ban Muslims from the United States,” Judge Gregory wrote. He cited, as an example, a 2015 statement calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Trump's voters claimed to love him because he spoke the truth. But the truth is, they loved him because he said racist, bigoted things that they say all the time. Smarter politicians avoid this kind of speech because it causes so many problems down the line.

If Trump has just decried Islamist extremism and vowed to keep America safe, like most politicians do, he could have slipped his Muslim ban past the courts. But he's an idiot, and doesn't understand how the law works.

His Muslim ban might ultimately win in the Supreme Court. But that's only because Republicans stole a Supreme Court appointment from Barack Obama by refusing to consider Merrick Garland's nomination after Antonin Scalia died a year before the election.

Almost every problem Trump is facing today is due to his big fat mouth.

He just couldn't shut up about the FBI's investigation into Russia's meddling in the election: he told James Comey to drop it and the FBI director refused.

The president demanded multiple times that Comey pledge his personal allegiance to Trump, something Comey could not do without violating his oath of office to defend the United States of American from enemies foreign and domestic. Despite what Trump might think, the president is not the same as the country.

Trump couldn't shut up about James Comey's firing, bragging to Lester Holt  on national TV that he fired Comey because Comey wouldn't drop the Russia investigation.

Trump couldn't shut up about the fabulous intelligence the NSA and the CIA gives him: he had to brag about it to the Russian ambassador and burn an intelligence source of a close ally.

Trump still couldn't shut up about his own leak, confirming later that the intelligence source was in fact Israel by blabbing that he never said it was Israel, when he was visiting Israel. The Israeli defense minister subsequently confirmed that Trump had blown their source.

While talking to the murderous Philippine dictator Trump again leaked sensitive information by bragging that there are two nuclear subs off the coast of North Korea, according to a Philippine transcript of the call.

Trump just cannot shut up. He cannot be trusted with sensitive information. He is clearly not fit to be president. All you need to do it butter him up, give him an opening to brag about himself and he'll divulge pretty much anything.

It really makes you wonder about all those leaks coming out of the White House. Are there really that many dissatisfied aides sabotaging Trump, or is he the actual source of all these leaks? After all, the leaker-in-chief used to pose as "John Miller" or "John Barron" and release juicy gossip about himself. He never seemed to care how bad he looked in public, just as long as people were talking about him.

Historically, Trump has taken to heart P.T. Barnum's adage that "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

But Trump is supposed to running a country. Not a circus.

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