The oddest Presidents Day
The weekend to honor American presidents provided disturbing reminders of how the current occupant of the White House is dishonoring the office. President Trump set the unsettling tone on Friday by declaring a national emergency to shift billions of dollars toward a U.S.Mexico border wall that Congress refused to fund in a spending bill he signed that very day.
“I didn’t need to do this,” Trump acknowledged, in a statement that undercuts his claim of an emergency and certainly will loom large in legal challenges. Other presidents have invoked their emergency powers, but never in a way that so brazenly attempted to defy the constitutional role of Congress to control the purse strings. Adding to the absurdity is his shifting of $3.6 billion from the Department of Defense: Since when does a national emergency call for seizing money from the military?
The craziness continued through the weekend.
Trump could not resist pulling out his phone to tweet shots at the special counsel’s investigation, the news media and even the satire of him on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
“The Mueller investigation is totally conflicted, illegal and rigged! Should never have been allowed to begin, except for the Collusion and many crimes committed by the Democrats. Witch Hunt!” he tweeted.
Let’s review the status of the Mueller investigation: The special counsel has produced dozens of indictments and eight convictions — including charges against eight people affiliated with the Trump campaign. Who among us would argue that the public interest was not served by holding Paul Manafort criminally accountable for many millions of dollars in tax fraud? And who among us would want to stop Mueller from unraveling the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and pursuing evidence that appears to be reaching high levels of the Trump campaign?
The weekend also brought the “60 Minutes” interview with former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Among the many startling revelations: Trump’s dismissal of our own intelligence community conclusions about the capability of North Korea’s ballistic missiles to reach the U.S. “I don’t care,” Trump said. “I believe (Vladimir) Putin.”
The term “not normal” comes to mind when an American president takes the word of a leader of a hostile foreign power over the best minds of U.S. intelligence. Nor is it normal for a leader of any democracy to assert, as Trump did in an all-caps tweet, “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
In modern times, presidents have shown an ability to laugh at themselves when satirized, as Lyndon Johnson did with the Smothers Brothers or Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush did with “Saturday Night Live.” Yet the thin-skinned Trump could not resist tweeting his anger at NBC for “hit jobs” such as his caricature by Alec Baldwin on “SNL,” which he said was “very unfair and should be looked into.”
Presidents Day weekend could not have produced more reminders that this norm-defying presidency is no laughing matter.