Loose lips
Team Trump sinks its own travel-ban executive order by ignoring the courts.
The winning presidential campaign might have run on the mantle of “law and order,” but Donald Trump and his team should have spent more time watching reruns of Jack McCoy and the gang.
“You have the right to remain silent,” as every ‘Law and Order’ fan knows by heart. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law.”
And boy was it used against Team Trump.
Judge Derrick K. Watson, of the Federal District Court in Honolulu, blocked the core of Trump’s second attempt at a travel ban on Wednesday evening. The opinion relies heavily on quotes, comments and claims by Trump and his political allies to deduce an unconstitutional religious animus in the executive order.
Read about the litany of loose tongues and you have to wonder what Trump and his advisers were thinking. Do they believe that judges simply live in a vacuum? Or maybe Trump imagines himself beyond the reach of the judiciary.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani might well have given away the store when he said that he’d been recruited by the campaign to craft a Muslim ban that would pass legal muster.
The judge also found it impossible to ignore campaign season interviews in which Trump explains how he would sign an order that focuses on territory in order to make a Muslim ban palatable.
In its argument to the court, the Trump administration warned against using personal statements to divine the “veiled psyche” and “secret motives” of government decision makers.
But as Judge Watson wrote, there’s nothing “veiled” about this line from a campaign press release: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
And after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the first order, Trump staffers continued their rhetoric while pursuing a second bite at the apple.
So why didn’t they expect the same basic response from a federal court?
Even after Watson handed down his opinion, Trump took to a podium in Tennessee and claimed that the second order was just “a watered down version” of the first and that “we ought to go back to the first one.”
Trump was in Tennessee to pay homage to President Andrew Jackson, but President Teddy Roosevelt probably has the best advice for the political neophyte: Speak softly, and carry a big stick. It is a bad sign for Trump when courtroom opponents seem to relish in his freewheeling speeches.
“Keep talking, Mr. President. Keep on talking.” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Cecillia Wang tweeted.
“Keep talking” might as well be Trump’s campaign strategy — one that undeniably worked at getting cable news cameras and cheering crowds. The U.S. Constitution is less amenable to the gift of gab. There are still years to go until the next presidential election, and if Trump expects to find any success in Washington then he’ll have to learn how our government actually works. The White House still has to answer to the courts. We’re a nation of laws, not of men, as President John Adams put it.
And as any “Law and Order” fan knows, things rarely end well for the braggadocious businessman.