An administration fueled by hubris went into overdrive Sunday, unwrapping a dead-eyed, 31-year-old speechwriter named Stephen Miller and hurling him at a mystified TV universe.
It was illuminating. With a defiance that sounded like adolescent stridency, and a slightly crazy tremolo that you normally associate with the criminally insane, the newest Sabbath windbag affirmed the omnipotence of the Trump Administration even after the appellate court’s recent slap-down of the president’s travel ban:
“Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned,” he decreed.
The Mighty Oz has spoken.
It’s hard to know what Team Trump expects to gain from such proclamations, other than to inspire a torrent of Heil Twitler jokes, but the insolence is staggering, if not dangerous. It suggests that no one in the White House has use for checks and balances, even though such tools of democracy have prevented tyranny since Madison wrote the rule book.
Worse, it showed that Trump is not only oblivious to constitutional tenets – notably, how executive authority is still limited by judicial review – he applauded his new spokescreature’s attempt to delegitimize an entire branch of government.
Trump U. exposes Donald’s contempt for the judicial system | Editorial
Miller, a former Jeff Sessions staffer, clearly knows as much about the role of the judiciary as his boss. He called the first restraining order, which applied nationwide, “an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country.”
So Miller argued that the judges reviewing the case – both the district judge in Seattle and the 9th Circuit Court – didn’t care enough about our safety. That isn’t the point: The court acknowledged the president’s enormous powers regarding national security, but noted that he never presented evidence of a threat that justifies what his executive order tried to accomplish.
None of the hijackers in the 9/11 attack – the rationale for Trump’s travel ban – came from the seven countries covered by his order.
The appellate panel wrote: “The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States. Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all.”
Then Miller proved its point, on four networks. It was both juvenile and chilling.
The president tweeted his approval anyway: “Congratulations Stephen Miller,” he wrote, “on representing me this morning on the various Sunday morning shows. Great job!”
Mostly, he earned that pat on the head for affirming Trump’s claim to unfettered authority.
Miller also circulated a lie about how the vote count in New Hampshire last November was fraudulent – it received the most attention during the chat show autopsies – as he punctuated it with, “It is a fact, and you will not deny it!”
Yes, it’s amusing. But it’s also a textbook hubris – whom the gods destroy, they first make mad with power. Through Week 4, the gods are irrepressible.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
