Misleading America
Donald Trump is abdicating his responsibility to lead the nation. He is doing it at the worst time, in the worst way. Even as law enforcement worked to marshal evidence and charge Sayfullo Saipov with killing eight people on New York City’s streets, the President all but called Sen. Chuck Schumer his accomplice.
Making matters worse, before the feds filed charges, Trump bizarrely said he would consider sending Saipov to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, for a crime committed on U.S. soil. This would be a patently illegal and unconstitutional act that would set back the pursuit of justice.
Along the way, the President slandered the U.S. justice system — calling the federal courts a “joke” and “laughingstock” that moves too slowly.
Trump apparently needs to be reminded, or taught, that since 9/11, federal courts have obtained more than 600 terrorism-related convictions — including 108 in which the defendant was captured abroad. In contrast, military commissions have produced eight convictions — three of which were overturned entirely and one partially.
But back to the presidential sucker punch aimed at Schumer, the Senate minority leader.
The outburst came Wednesday morning, provoked, of course, by something Trump saw on Fox News. The very President who days after a madman killed more than 58 people in Las Vegas deemed it premature to discuss public policy proclaimed: “The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based.”
Facts about the program Trump now uses as a cudgel against Schumer, if facts still matter: Up to 50,000 green cards per year, a fraction of the 1 million issued annually overall, are processed through the diversity visa program.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Saipov was among them when he came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010.
The program was designed to admit people from parts of the world with low levels of immigration to the United States. Recipients are required to have at least a high school education and at least two years of job experience. Terrorism connections, among other things, rule an individual out.
This “Chuck Schumer special” was passed in 1990 on a bipartisan basis, when Schumer was a member of the House, and signed into law by the first President George Bush.
Over the years, more than a million people have become permanent residents this way. Trump would have you believe that if one turned out to be a terrorist, after having been radicalized here, that’s reason alone to scrap the whole thing.
To be clear: This is not to blindly defend the visa lottery program. It may merit reform or elimination. In fact — underlining more Trump dishonesty — the comprehensive immigration reform Schumer championed in 2013, alongside leading Republicans, would have scrapped it.
But its strength or weakness has nothing to do with opening the door to terrorists.
So, let it set in: Right after a terrorist attack on the nation’s largest city, the President of the United States just smeared a leader from that city, in an attack of stunning dishonesty.
How low can Donald Trump go? We have yet to find out.