Failed leadership emphasized with failed Oval Office speech- opinion echo in The Nation
Trump Absolutely Failed to Make a Case That His Border ‘Crisis’ Is a National Emergency
The president’s speech was a mangled mess of lies and fear mongering that further discredited his shutdown gambit.
The only thing that Donald Trump’s first speech to the nation from the Oval Office proved is that Trump is no good at making speeches to the nation from the Oval Office.
These actual facts must frame the debate about this president’s fact-free assertion that he might invoke emergency powers to justify the expenditure of billions of dollars to build a border wall that has not been authorized by Congress. And they create the context in which Tuesday’s speech must be assessed.
Every president is duty-bound to make a compelling case case for the use of emergency powers. That was what made Trump’s extraordinary address to the nation Tuesday January 8, evening such a big deal.
And such a disaster for his crumbling presidency.
Trump wanted to portray his border-security agenda as “just common sense.” But there was nothing sensible about the squinting president’s attempt to read from the “how-much-more-American-blood-must-we-shed” script that his fear mongering speechwriters had crafted.
Claiming that he was determined to end a “cycle of human suffering,” Trump offered up a stew of outright lies and false premises. He tried to suggest that he sympathized with immigrants, while at the same time portraying them as violent criminals. He repeated his absurd promise that Mexico will pay for the wall, with the footnote that this will now happen “indirectly.” He asserted that immigrants take jobs from American workers, at a time when American employers say they struggle to fill positions. He tried to blame congressional Democrats for a government shutdown, after tellingChuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi less than a month ago that “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down—I’m not going to blame you for it.”
Trump’s address was precisely the “word salad of nonsense” that the Rev. Jesse Jackson predicted it would be. It did nothing to change the reality that, as the civil-rights leader noted, “There is no crisis at the southern border. No caravans, trying to sneak in; no terrorists coming across in mass numbers. The greatest number of undocumented immigrants in the United States are those who have overstayed their visas after coming here legally by plane.” And it did nothing to justify what Jackson decried as Trump’s “phony emergency.”
Since the president failed to make the case that was required of him, Congress must be prepared to check and balance Trump before his infamy becomes a disaster for the nation.
“If the president follows through on the threat to declare a state of emergency simply to circumvent the legislative branch and build a wall on the Mexican border,” says Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn, “then Congress must act swiftly and decisively to check the abuse utilizing the National Emergencies Act, which was enacted in 1976 as a post-Watergate reform to reassert Congress’s constitutional role in checking and safeguarding against authoritarian abuses of power.”
The president’s speech was a mangled mess of lies and fear mongering that further discredited his shutdown gambit.
 |
| Donald Trump's failed leadership was painfully evident in his meaningless Oval Office debacle and useless border wall speech |
The only thing that Donald Trump’s first speech to the nation from the Oval Office proved is that Trump is no good at making speeches to the nation from the Oval Office.
In fact, the president failed on Tuesday evening to deliver an even minimally credible case to support his claim that there is “a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.” Nothing that he said in a rambling eight-minute recitation of talking points and applause lines from campaign rallies could justify his use of emergency powers to build an unnecessary and unworkable border wall.
These are the vital takeaways from Trump’s speech, as the president and his aides have in recent days been suggesting that he might declare a national emergency as part of a scheme to “secure the border.”
Presidents have limited authority to declare national emergencies when there are crises so severe that immediate action is necessary. But presidents cannot abuse this authority; they must operate within boundaries established by judicial precedent and the 1976 National Emergencies Act.
These are the vital takeaways from Trump’s speech, as the president and his aides have in recent days been suggesting that he might declare a national emergency as part of a scheme to “secure the border.”
Presidents have limited authority to declare national emergencies when there are crises so severe that immediate action is necessary. But presidents cannot abuse this authority; they must operate within boundaries established by judicial precedent and the 1976 National Emergencies Act.
These actual facts must frame the debate about this president’s fact-free assertion that he might invoke emergency powers to justify the expenditure of billions of dollars to build a border wall that has not been authorized by Congress. And they create the context in which Tuesday’s speech must be assessed.
Every president is duty-bound to make a compelling case case for the use of emergency powers. That was what made Trump’s extraordinary address to the nation Tuesday January 8, evening such a big deal.
And such a disaster for his crumbling presidency.
Trump wanted to portray his border-security agenda as “just common sense.” But there was nothing sensible about the squinting president’s attempt to read from the “how-much-more-American-blood-must-we-shed” script that his fear mongering speechwriters had crafted.
Claiming that he was determined to end a “cycle of human suffering,” Trump offered up a stew of outright lies and false premises. He tried to suggest that he sympathized with immigrants, while at the same time portraying them as violent criminals. He repeated his absurd promise that Mexico will pay for the wall, with the footnote that this will now happen “indirectly.” He asserted that immigrants take jobs from American workers, at a time when American employers say they struggle to fill positions. He tried to blame congressional Democrats for a government shutdown, after tellingChuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi less than a month ago that “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down—I’m not going to blame you for it.”
Trump’s address was precisely the “word salad of nonsense” that the Rev. Jesse Jackson predicted it would be. It did nothing to change the reality that, as the civil-rights leader noted, “There is no crisis at the southern border. No caravans, trying to sneak in; no terrorists coming across in mass numbers. The greatest number of undocumented immigrants in the United States are those who have overstayed their visas after coming here legally by plane.” And it did nothing to justify what Jackson decried as Trump’s “phony emergency.”
Since the president failed to make the case that was required of him, Congress must be prepared to check and balance Trump before his infamy becomes a disaster for the nation.
“If the president follows through on the threat to declare a state of emergency simply to circumvent the legislative branch and build a wall on the Mexican border,” says Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn, “then Congress must act swiftly and decisively to check the abuse utilizing the National Emergencies Act, which was enacted in 1976 as a post-Watergate reform to reassert Congress’s constitutional role in checking and safeguarding against authoritarian abuses of power.”
Labels: Jesse Jackson, John Nichols, shutdown
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 5:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home