Treason is a joke to Trump
WHY SO serious?
President Trump was just clowning around when he suggested that Democrats committed treason, a White House spokesman said Tuesday.
Trump was only poking fun and speaking “tongue in cheek” when he blasted Democrats as acting “treasonous” and “un-American” for refusing to applaud as much as he wanted during his State of the Union address, according to administration officials.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a double-amputee veteran of the Iraq War, didn’t find the President’s comments very funny.
She tweeted her umbrage, working in a reminder that Trump avoided serving in the military during the Vietnam War due to bone spurs.
“We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy,” Duckworth (photo inset bottom) wrote. “I swore an oath — in the military and in the Senate — to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap.”
While discussing tax cuts on Monday at an Ohio manufacturing plant, Trump said Republicans went “totally crazy, wild, they loved everything” about his address before Congress last week.
He then cast Democrats’ refusal to applaud as an affront to the nation. Trump added that they’d prefer to see him do badly than the country do well.
“Can we call that treason? Why not?” he asked.
“They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much,” he added.
Even some Republicans said Trump went too far. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) took to the Senate floor to blast his comments. “I have seen the President’s most ardent defenders use the now-weary argument that the President’s comments were meant as a joke, just sarcasm, only tongue in cheek. But treason is not a punch line, Mr. President,” the frequent Trump critic said.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley insisted the President had made the comment in jest.
“It was tongue in cheek. The President was obviously joking,” he said. “But what’s serious is it seems as though the Democrats put their personal hatred for this President over their desires to see this country succeed.”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood by some of Trump’s remarks, maintaining it is indeed “un-American not to be excited about the fact that more people in this country have jobs.”
Asked about Flake’s comments, she said, “I don’t really care what Sen. Flake has to say.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries ripped into Trump for his accusations, which came less than a week after the President’s calls for bipartisanship during his address to Congress.
He said Tuesday that treason is “not a laughing matter,” but a “serious crime embedded in the Constitution, punishable by death.”
Jeffries, a Democrat who represents a large swath of Brooklyn and Queens, went on to blast the President for talking treason at an event that was billed as a push for the GOP-backed tax plan, and “not a political event.” “How dare you lecture us about treason. This is not a dictatorship. It’s a democracy,” he said. “And we do not have to stand for a reality-show host masquerading as President of the United States.” Trump’s criticism comes at a critical juncture as Democrats and Republicans attempt to find a joint solution on immigration and a way to fund the government past a Thursday deadline. Democrats also accused Trump of trying to distract from the plunge the stock market took Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 1,100 points.
Mayor de Blasio said Trump’s comments were “ludicrous.”
“I don’t know why this guy says things like this because it just alienates huge swaths of the population,” de Blasio added,
A frustrated Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told The Hill that it’s “getting tedious” to react to every “outrageous” comment made by the President.
“I do not consider myself treasonous — it’s ridiculous. And to respond on a weekly basis to the outrageous things that the President of the United States says is getting tedious,” Booker told the website.