"No two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is -- in other words, not a thing, but a think." - Penelope Fitzgerald
Jan 12, 2018
Height Of Hypocrisy 7: The Executive Order & Dictator/Tyrant Hypocrisy
This post is in two parts. Part 1 covers the GOPs executive order hypocrisy and since this connects to their hypocrisy on being Americans and not dictators, part 2 covers how they are actually like tyrants rather than politicians one would expect in a democracy. (Yet another super long post)
Here is a write up explaining the GOP's hypocrisy on Executive Orders (and thus their hypocrisy on their tyrant and dictator rhetoric of the last 8 years (before Trump).
For the past eight years, Republicans skewered President Obama as an "emperor" who acted outside of his "legal authority" for the executive orders he issued from the Oval Office. Now, they are cheering President Donald Trump as he issues a raft of his own.
Trump has signed a dozen executive orders in his first few days in office, tackling everything from rolling back the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to beginning construction on the Southern border wall to freezing federal hiring. Some Republicans cheered him on, while others, charged with overseeing and investigating executive oversight, have remained silent.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, who is now Trump's attorney general nominee, called Obama "emperor" for his use of executive action on immigration. He has not commented on Trump's dozen presidential actions.
House Speaker Paul Ryan condemned Obama's executive orders, calling a handful he issued a year ago aimed at reducing gun violence "a dangerous level of executive overreach." Following Trump’s immigration executive order signed Wednesday, he expressed support.
“This is about keeping Americans safe.” Ryan said in a statement on Wednesday. “I applaud President Trump for keeping his promise to make this a national priority.”
In a Thursday press conference, Ryan argued that Trump's executive orders were different — because he agreed with the actions.
"It's quite the opposite. President Obama used his pen and phone to exceed his powers in our perspective. Everything Obama did by executive order, this president can undo," Ryan said, arguing that Trump could also use executive orders to overcome barriers they've encountered in the past when attempting to build a wall on the Southern border.
During Obama’s term, the House Judiciary Committee went as far as to form a task force to probe executive authority accusing “presidents of both parties” of “legislating from the Oval Office,” but acknowledged its focus was Obama.
Rep. Steve King, who heads up the House Judiciary subcommittee on executive authority, declined through a spokesman to comment on Trump's use of executive order. The ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Steve Cohen said he doubted the committee would act on Trump’s executive orders right now.
"They’ll probably push it down," Cohen told NBC News. “It will be a test to see if they’re consistent with their philosophy."
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said Obama had “exceeded his executive authority” and was acting “without legal authority" in 2014, following Obama’s immigration executive orders.
On Wednesday, he released a statement of support after Trump used an executive order to begin constructing a border wall.
“I welcome President Trump’s focus on these problems and look forward to reviewing today’s executive orders and working with the administration to accomplish our shared goals,” he said
Related Info::
History exposes GOP immigration outcry as bogus - Rachel Maddow reviews instances of Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush taking executive action on immigration, contrary to anti-Obama Republicans who insist that President Obama's proposed action in the absence of a bill from Congress is unprecedented.
Article Extract:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's anticipated order that would shield millions of immigrants now living illegally in the U.S. from deportation is not without precedent.
Two of the last three Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — did the same thing in extending amnesty to family members who were not covered by the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1986.
There was no political explosion then comparable to the one Republicans are threatening now.
A tea party-influenced GOP is poised to erupt if and when Obama follows through on his promise. He wants to extend protection from deportation to millions of immigrant parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and expand his 2-year-old program that shields immigrants brought illegally to this country as children.
"The audacity of this president to think he can completely destroy the rule of law with the stroke of a pen is unfathomable to me," said GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an outspoken opponent of relaxing U.S. immigration law. "It is unconstitutional, it is cynical, and it violates the will of the American people." {Editors note: Steve King is one of the "Legitimate rape" Republicans. Not a guy you would want around your family. }
Such strong feelings are common among congressional Republicans. GOP leaders warn that an executive order from Obama would "poison the well" and severely damage Republicans' willingness to work with the president during his final two years in office.
Some Republicans have even raised the possibility of impeachment.
Nearly three decades ago, there was barely a peep when Reagan and Bush used their authority to extend amnesty to the spouses and minor children of immigrants covered by the 1986 law.
In 1986, Congress and Reagan enacted a sweeping overhaul that gave legal status to up to 3 million immigrants without authorization to be in the country, if they had come to the U.S. before 1982. Spouses and children who could not meet that test did not qualify, which incited protests that the new law was breaking up families.
Early efforts in Congress to amend the law to cover family members failed. In 1987, Reagan's Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner announced that minor children of parents granted amnesty by the law would get protection from deportation.
Spouses and children of couples in which one parent qualified for amnesty but the other did not remained subject to deportation, leading to efforts to amend the 1986 law.
In a parallel to today, the Senate acted in 1989 to broaden legal status to families but the House never took up the bill. Through the INS, Bush advanced a new "family fairness" policy that put in place the Senate measure. Congress passed the policy into law by the end of the year as part of broader immigration legislation.
"It's a striking parallel," said Mark Noferi of the pro-immigration American Immigration Council. "Bush Sr. went big at the time. He protected about 40 percent of the unauthorized population. Back then that was up to 1.5 million. Today that would be about 5 million."
Here is how hypocritical Trump is being (but like Wolf says in his book, Trump simply repeats back the last thing said to him - especially if its from Fox News, so when Trump said executive orders were wrong, he was simply lying, as he always does (see 'Trump is a dictator' proof for more on this)
And his penchant for signing executive orders is no exception. Back in 2012 Trump lambasted Obama for his use of executive actions to push forward his policies.
And yet, as the graph below reveals, Trump has signed more orders over the same period in office.
The Executive Order hypocrisy is clear. So, is there any proof of the GOP being like tyrants and dictators themselves? (Tons actually). Well, here is yet another proof of the GOP being, basically, tyrants...
At Its Heart The GOP Is Really A Pro-Dictator Tyrannical Party
First, a look at Trump's pro-witch hunt and pro-dictator mindset...
Trump believes he can use the Justice Department like his own justice system (like a dictator)...
Trump believes Obama was dishonest and Eric holder protected Obama AND TRUMP WANTS THAT TOO...
Trump was angry for Sessions following, well thought out and long established, laws for a balanced investigations...
Trump made it clear he wanted a witch hunt type director (Roy Cohn), so the Constitution and the rule of law it represents, means nothing to him, i.e. he LITERALLY wants to be a Nazi style dictator...
Republican gifts to big oil reject past oil disaster lessonsRachel Maddow looks at how Republicans have cut a tax on big oil that accumulates money for oil spill clean-ups, and rolled back safety rules put in place after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon spill. Duration: 4:10
Clearly helping your other party members (by fulfilling their wishes) is a GOP tradition (Rick Scott is a Republican)... Zinke randomly grants offshore drilling exception to Florida Rachel Maddow reports that after almost every governor of a coastal state raised objections to the Trump administration allowing oil companies to drill offshore, Secretary Zinke agreed to exempt Florida from the list after being asked by Rick Scott. Duration: 0:53
This is so crazy I don't have the words...
Trump appointee would force teen refugee to bear rapist's childBrigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's reproductive freedom project, talks with Rachel Maddow about the fight to defend the reproductive rights of undocumented teens from Trump-appointed anti-abortion zealots in the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Duration: 7:01
An example of one of Trump's appointees (who but a person -intentionally - trying to be a dictator would pick such an obvious and bad liar?)... Trump's Hoekstra 'lies about his lies'Donald Trump's pick for U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, was caught red-handed lying - and then lying some more. Duration: 3:08
They are even using fake comments, with Russia's help, to pass laws with LOW approval ratings! (How much more proof do we need that the GOP are dictators at heart and in thought in action?)... American identities hijacked to fake support for Trump policies Rachel Maddow reports on an emerging pattern of public feedback on U.S. policy changes being stuff with fake comments from the hijacked identities of real Americans to show artificial support for Trump administration policies. Duration: 13:50
Clearly, when you pass a law against 83% of the Nation and 75% of your own party then Democracy is the least of your concerns, In fact, this is exactly what full blown dictators do, i.e. pass unpopular laws...
This unpopular move was passed on party lines, (i.e. GOP exposed thier desire to be dictators yet again)...
That's not even the crazy part. Part of the excuse for passing these undemocratic laws is due to FAKE comments INCLUDING THOSE FROM RUSSIA!...
Next evidence of dictatorship mongering (treason) is rolling back a law to guarantee honesty USING FAKE COMMENTS AGAIN! (clearly, this is a pattern, i.e. the GOP are INTENTIONALLY using fake comments to push their undemocratic laws to make it appear democratic! At least they are trying to pretend not to be dictators! That's a good sign!)...
The connection between Russia influencing elections AND laws is now pretty clear!...
Evidence of Russian trolls seeking to influence the process through social media (for a side that is already not fact based but conspiracy based! Imagine how easy it must be to rile up the GOP base and spread lies for the Russians!)...
I guess, "if you can't get people to agree then you make up fake people" - Dictators Handbook...
Forget Russian fake news for a moment. Another extremely consequential privacy-breaching, identity-theft hack is undermining our democracy and almost certainly being perpetuated by corporate America.
A pattern of cyber deception is appearing across the federal government in the nooks and crannies of the process where White House directives or Congress’ laws are turned into the rules Americans must abide by—or in the Trump era, are repealed.
Hundreds of thousands of comments, purportedly made by Americans, have come in over the electronic transom to at least five different federal agencies calling for an end to Obama-era consumer protections and other regulations that impede profits, a series of investigative reports by the Wall Street Journal found. Except, the people who supposedly sent these comments never did.
The latest example concerns the so-called "Fiduciary Rule," which originated in the Labor Department and was to talk effect in July 2019, to try to prevent conflicts of investment from investment advisers targeting retirees.
“Consider the experience of Robert Schubert, a Devon, Pa., salesperson,” the Journal’s report said. “A comment posted in his name on the Labor Department website opposed the rule, saying: ‘I do not need, do not want and object to any federal interference in my retirement planning.’ In an interview, Mr. Schubert said the comment was a fraud. He didn’t post it and doesn’t agree with it. ‘I am disgusted that people can post comments using my name,’ Mr. Schubert said.”
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump assured voters he was eager to get rid of the carried-interest loophole, because, as he put it, the “hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.” Even after the election, the White House said more than once that the president was committed to closing the loophole.
We now know, of course, that the Republican tax plan did not close the loophole. Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser in Trump’s White House, told Axios yesterday that it’s Congress’ fault.
Axios co-founder Mike Allen asked Cohn what was the one change he would make to the tax reform bill. “We would have cut carried interest,” Cohn said Wednesday. “We probably tried 25 times.”
He blamed resistance on Capitol Hill. “We hit opposition in that big white building with the dome at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue every time we tried,” he said in the interview. “It is just the reality of the political system.” […]
Cohn told Axios that the hedge fund and private equity lobby was too strong to overcome. “The reality of this town is that constituency [hedge funds and private equity] has a very large presence in the House and the Senate. They have really strong relationships on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “We just didn’t have the support on carried interest.”
Cohn went on to describe a conversation with Trump from earlier this week in which the president asked for an explanation as to why the loophole wasn’t taken out of his party’s plan.
Just so we’re all clear, there are overwhelming reasons to be skeptical about Cohn’s version of events. I personally don’t believe for a moment that the White House “tried 25 times” to close the carried-interest loophole and that the president personally demanded an explanation for the policy’s survival. This sounds like desperate spin to explain the latest broken Trump promise.
But just for kicks, let’s say Cohn’s correct. Let’s assume his story is 100% accurate and the process unfolded exactly the way he claims it did.
If so, according to a top official in the Republican White House, congressional Republicans ignored the wishes of a Republican president in order to cater to the demands of finance industry lobbyists.
In fact, according to Cohn’s impression of the process, Trump simply wasn’t as powerful as those representing the interests of hedge funds and private equity firms.
This didn’t cause much of a stir, but that strikes me as a pretty extraordinary thing for a White House official to say out loud, on the record, in public. Do GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have a response to the allegation that their conferences ignored their own party’s president in response to demands from finance industry lobbyists?
Does Trump have an explanation as to why those lobbyists proved to be stronger than him?
The day after former President Barack Obamadelivered his 2016 State of the Union address, Rep. Jason Chaffetz penned a letter chastising the commander in chief’s use of executive orders without working with Congress.
“It is unilateral, overreaching and unconstitutional,” the Utah Republican wrote. “Left unchecked, it is behavior that undermines, and will ultimately erode, the foundation of our democracy and our freedom.”
Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, decried in June 2015 an executive order by Obama that expanded a program that allowed children of undocumented immigrants and their parents a path to avoid deportation.
With the loss of the Democrats’ Senate majority, Cole wrote, Obama’s “arrogant answer will be to bypass Congress and act alone.”
Cole called it “temper tantrum-like behavior” and berated the “my-way-or-the-highway attitude.”
But many of the same Republicans who spent the Obama years hurling attacks over his use of executive orders have made an about-face under the Trump administration and its use of the same mechanism to bypass the legislative branch.
Then: When President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court last year—almost a year before his second term was up—then-candidate Trump added his voice to the chorus of Republicans who refused to grant Garland a congressional hearing, arguing that (contrary to the rule laid out by a little document called the Constitution) the vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia should be filled by a nomination, not from the sitting president, but from the next president. “Certainly they could wait it out very easily,” Mr. Trump said of the Senate’s confirmation process. “I would be not in favor of going forward.”
Now: Amid cries that Democrats should grant Trump’s nominee Neil Gorsuch the same “courtesy” as Garland and attempt to stall the final vote on Gorsuch with a filibuster, Trump’s trusty press secretary, Sean Spicer told reporters: “The default is if you are generally qualified and not extreme you are confirmed.” You could call this throwing stones from a (glass) White House.
Extract: 5. Executive orders
__Then:__Back in 2012, Trump lambasted Obama for advancing his goals through executive action, tweeting, “Why is @BarackObama constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grabs of authority?”
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