Reminder: Trump is a demented criminal president

I just want to remind everyone that America elected a demented criminal president and as a consequence, we can no longer assume what we used to assume when it came to matters of law and politics.

I know that sounds like a sweeping generalization, but sometimes you gotta swing hard if you’re going to get people’s attention, and right now, given that liberals and Democrats got their heads in the sand, I think it’s prudent to swing hard, even if I’m proven wrong in the end.

And I know that saying something as sweeping as this can sound pessimistic, as if I’m suggesting that nothing can be done about a demented criminal president, but I don’t see it that way. I think liberals and Democrats still believe Donald Trump is going to overreach, and they still believe public opinion is going to turn, and when it does, thank God! Liberals and Democrats won’t have to fight so hard!

Again, we elected a demented criminal president.

We can no longer assume what we used to assume.

Case in point is the reaction to Donald Trump’s executive order claiming to “end birthright citizenship,” in the words of USA Today.

Liberals and Democrats were correct to point out that the president can’t do any such thing on his own, as ending the legal right to be called a US citizen due to being born on US soil would require a constitutional amendment. It was said that the order would be stopped almost immediately by the courts. Yesterday, 18 attorneys general from states run by Democrats filed suit to do just that.

While this reaction is correct as a matter of fact, it is wrong as a matter of politics. This is a demented criminal president we are talking about, and while the courts may end up stopping his order, the courts can’t stop a demented criminal president from ignoring the courts and acting, you know, like a criminal. We assume that a demented criminal president will obey the law and I don’t see why we should assume that.

Even if the president himself said OK, OK, I can’t end birthright citizenship by myself, there are plenty of people in his administration, not just political appointees, who would be happy to break the law and just pretend that the children of immigrants who are born on US soil are not citizens. They would also be happy to stop doing for them what they would do for any other (white) baby born on US soil, such as issuing Social Security cards or other important federal documents.

Even if it came to light that this rogue federal agency was responsible for infringing the rights and privilege of tens of thousands of natural-born citizens, who would prosecute the offense? The same Justice Department that is, right now, planning payback against the members of the Congress who investigated the J6 insurrection?

Even if that Justice Department actually did manage to prosecute and convict these rogue federal agents (who were only doing what Trump wanted them to do), should we assume that the same demented criminal president who pardoned virtually all the paramilitaries who sacked and looted the US Capitol would not pardon them as well.

And even if public opinion turned against Trump’s lawlessness, what reaction could we reasonably expect? The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch said the inauguration was “a dangerous display of rapid mental decline” and that the biggest takeaway was “seeing how rapidly the oldest new president in America is declining right in front of us.”

“We’ve just flipped the car keys of this 248-year-old republic to a grandpa who starts his four-year road trip already in a serious state of mental decline, with all the guardrails of yesteryear stripped away by a corrupt Supreme Court, a feckless and increasingly useless Democratic Party, and a bended-knee elite media,” he said (my italics).

Again, it bears repeating: this is a demented criminal president we are talking about. The things that would normally constrain a president – the institutions, the courts and public opinion – are probably not going to constrain this one. I would suggest that they almost certainly won’t.

And while liberals and Democrats console themselves into believing the only way to end birthright citizenship is by amending the Constitution, they’re missing the real goal, which is getting around all those quaint little rules that everyone else plays by and going straight to the US Supreme Court. Trump’s executive order really could end birthright citizenship if he can force five justices to agree with it.

Like a lot of liberals and Democrats, I don’t yet know how to resist a president who is criminal enough to ignore the courts (or turn a blind eye to crimes committed in his name) and demented enough to ignore public opinion. I don’t yet know how to think about politics as applied to a president who won’t act like any president who came before him.

What I do know is we have to try – if not for ourselves, then for our children, and for those who came before us and did figure it out.

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