Donald Trump. (photo: Nigel Parry)
Who's a Laughingstock? And Why Aren't You Laughing?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
07 November 17
Remember, in Trump's wonderland shooting up a church is not a guns issue
In his latest impersonation of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, the
president of the United States stopped just short of shouting "Off with his
head!" at the latest New York terror suspect, but pretty much everyone knows
that's exactly what he meant. Lewis Carroll intended the Red Queen to be an
entertaining caricature by virtue of her absurdity. That's a luxury we don't
have when considering our Trump's affinity with the Red Queen's
jurisprudence: "Sentence first - verdict afterwards." That's just what our
Trump demands again and again from legal proceedings, with appalling
disregard for the Constitution and any other law that happens to displease
him.
On its face, that disregard for law, that open hostility to anything like a
fair process that might produce a result displeasing to Trump - all that
would seem to be an obvious and constant violation of his oath office
("preserve, protect and defend the Constitution"), as well as an obvious and
constant violation of the constitutional mandate (Article II, section 3)
that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
As recently as 1970, presidential messing with the judicial process was
generally taken seriously, as when Richard Nixon at a press conference said
of Charles Manson, "Here is a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of
eight murders without reason." Manson's defense attorneys promptly called
for a mistrial, the presiding judge took it under advisement, and amidst
public outcry Nixon backed off on his prejudicial public comments, claiming
that he didn't mean to imply that Manson was guilty. Nixon's attorney
general (and later convicted felon) John Mitchell, who was present at the
press conference, said later: "I don't believe the President made the charge
or implied one." [At the time, with killings in Vietnam, Cambodia, Kent
State, and Fred Hampton's bedroom, among other places of extra-judicial
execution, it would have been more to the point to note that Nixon was a man
who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of thousands of murders without good
or just reason.]
On October 31, the FBI charged Sayfullo Saipov with the truck-murder of
eight people in lower Manhattan. Saipov waived his Miranda rights and said
he had planned the attack for Halloween and asked to display an Islamic
State flag in his hospital room. Referring to Saipov's attack the next day,
in the midst of a long statement that first blamed immigration policy with
no coherent argument, Trump said to reporters at a cabinet meeting:
Terrorists are constantly seeking to strike our nation, and it will require
the unflinching devotion to our law enforcement, homeland security, and
intelligence professionals to keep America safe..
We have to get much tougher. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get
much less politically correct. We're so politically correct that we're
afraid to do anything.. We also have to come up with punishment that's far
quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right
now. They'll go through court for years..
We need quick justice and we need strong justice - much quicker and much
stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke
and it's a laughingstock.
In other words, Trump is arguing for an American police state that is
somehow omniscient enough to keep out immigrants who will commits crimes
seven years after being admitted to the country. Saipov was an accountant
came here in 2010 under a Diversity Immigrant Visa and became a permanent
resident with a green card. And for anyone who doubted the police state
drift of the commander in chief, there was this exchange near the end of the
press event, referring to the Guantanamo prison that is an ongoing crime
against humanity:
Q: Mr. President, do you want the assailant from New York sent to Gitmo?
THE PRESIDENT: I would certainly consider that, yes. Q: Are you considering
that now, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo - I would
certainly consider that, yes.
If it weren't such an abomination of torture and legal horror, Guantanamo
would be a laughingstock to the world. Instead it's a shock to civilized
countries and a great recruiting tool for Islamic extremists. Guantanamo,
whether Americans like it or not, is America's face to the world.
Established in panic and fear by the Bush administration, perpetuated mostly
by Congressional panic and fear by an Obama administration that didn't care
all that much, now it is a dark joke that is a fact of American life, where
we keep people charged with no crime without a chance of release and let
them starve themselves in protest until they're too weak to resist
force-feeding, by which we keep them alive to prolong the endless torture of
hopeless, painful lives. Trump has long missed the brutal joke of Guantanamo
reality while tweeting lies about how many Guantanamo detainees have
returned to the field (relatively few), feeding a fake news story of long
standing.
That's not the joke and laughingstock our Trump was referring to, although
it should be. But Guantanamo is a fine example of "Sentence first - verdict
afterwards" jurisprudence, so Trump is willing to overlook Obama's
fingerprints all over this particular legacy. Trump's laughingstock is the
constitutionally-based American judicial system. Except that in the White
House wonderland of 2017, Trump never said what the White House transcript
says he said. He didn't call the American judicial system a joke and a
laughingstock. That's what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders lied on November 2:
That's not what he said. He said that process has people calling us a joke
and a laughingstock.
To be fair, only her first statement is a demonstrable lie. The second
statement, that people are calling us a joke and a laughingstock is actually
true, just not at all in the way Sanders wants us to believe it. And the
Justice Department had already charged Saipov in federal court in New York
amidst widespread reports of how well the federal court system has dealt
with terrorism cases, especially as compared to the dismal record of the
military tribunals at Guantanamo. Even Trump seemed to acknowledge that
reality when he tweeted, once again interfering in the judicial process:
Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that
process takes much longer than going through the Federal system.
Not to leave bad enough alone, Trump tweeted four minutes later with a
sentiment that out-Nixoned Nixon:
...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the
horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!
Our Trump knows no bounds. Every time he tweets like this it's another
impeachable offense that the cowardly majority in Congress will ignore, or
even follow. We know what kind of government our Trump would like us to
have. He made that clear to the Washington Post:
The saddest thing is, because I am the President of the United States, I am
not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I'm not supposed to
be involved with the FBI. I'm not supposed to be doing the kind of things I
would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated by that. I look at what's
happening with the Justice Department, why aren't they going after Hillary
Clinton with her emails and with her dossier, and the kind of money - I
don't know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier,
which is total phony, fake, fraud and how is it used?
Our Trump wants to be emperor, perhaps not in name, but in fact. He wants no
checks and balances, he wants no rational consideration, he just wants
obedience. He wants to punish his enemies: "Sentence first - verdict
afterwards." He wants the kind of judiciary they already have in Guantanamo,
where the presiding judge (a general) feels justified in convicting defense
counsel (a higher ranking general) of contempt of court, not just for
standing up for his client, but for standing up for his client's civilian
attorneys. This was the first military tribunal conviction since 2008, not
of a terrorist but an American general, sentenced to 21 days in confinement.
The convicted general is the chief defense counsel for military commissions
and the second highest ranking general in the Marines. The general's
underlying offense was his objection to the government wiretapping attorney
conversations with their clients. He was freed after three days'
confinement. The case is continuing, with Pentagon lawyers uncertain whether
any of the developments so far are within the officials' legal authority,
and a federal civilian judge reluctant to hear any appeal. This would all be
breathtakingly funny if it were fiction. But it's a real world
laughingstock.
There are laughingstocks everywhere. We have a government of laughingstocks.
The president is a laughingstock, as is his cabinet and his veep. The
Congress is a laughingstock - that's the one truly bipartisan thing about
Congress. For the moment, only the judiciary is not a complete
laughingstock, although the Supreme Court is teetering toward the bad joke
category. The federal judiciary continues to maintain centers of
rationality, coherence, and constitutional principle. But time is against
the judiciary. As Trump appointees fill more and more vacancies, we can
expect to be governed by a full laughingstock. And the joke will be on us.
Unless we can somehow regain our full civic size and become another Alice
who tells them all: "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!"
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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