Monthly Archives: February 2019

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 124: Why This Isn’t a National Emergency

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Last Friday many of us gathered around our televisions, radios, and social media with one question: will our government stay open? We all were grateful that President Trump signed an continuing resolution to keep the government open despite not getting all the funding he wanted for a border wall on the Mexican border.

I’ve written about this before but a border wall is expensive, ineffective, and unpopular.

Unfortunately we knew it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop, and it did. President Trump has shown us again and again that he believes his office gives him unlimited power and that we are not citizens but subjects. I’m not sure who, but someone told him about the National Emergencies Act of 1976. It allows the President, during national emergencies, to act now and wait for Congress to support it. You can read his remarks on February 15th here: here. Previous presidents have invoked this during emergencies like 9/11 and hurricanes. These were events were it was clear that fast action was needed and consensus was assumed.

Enter President Trump’s wall. He recognized that he’ll lose much of his base if he doesn’t build the wall and he’ll pay an even higher price if he shuts down parts of the government again knowing the House of Representatives will never agree to the wall.

And so he manufactured an emergency. He’s claiming that we need the wall to stop drugs even though a wall won’t fix it. He also claims this will stop criminals from coming and committing crimes against Americans even though the crime rate among the undocumented is lower than the crime rate among Americans.

Clearly the emergency he speaks of isn’t an emergency for the United States. It’s an emergency for his re-election campaign. He’s recognized that the road to victory in 2020 becomes much more difficult if he doesn’t have a wall to point to.

His base doesn’t care that Hillary isn’t in jail or that coal isn’t coming back. But to his horror, Mr. Trump does know that when he promised to build the wall they were listening.

The rest of us care more about our future than we care about his future. The president’s road now goes through the court system and I pray the Judicial Branch cares more about our future.

Fortunately the next step is the Judicial Branch. As I write this 16 states have filed suit to stop this. I believe they will rule in favor of our nation instead of our president, but even if they don’t, there’s a good chance it will be tied up long enough to land on the desk of the next president.

We can only hope.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 123: All Americans Should Read James Comey’s Book

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This morning my wife Nancy and I finished reading James Comey’s book A Higher Loyalty.

It’s an excellent book and I recommend it to everyone. In it Mr. Comey describes the highs and lows of his life and his commitment to serve our nation. By any measure Mr. Comey’s patriotism reminds us all of what we should all aspire to as Americans and pass that along to our children.

President Trump’s election came three years after Mr. Comey was appointed by President Obama for a ten year term. And while the FBI director normally serves for ten years, he serves at the pleasure of the President. He can be fired by the President for any reason, or for no reason.

And Director Comey was indeed fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017. There’s much to this and I encourage everyone to purchase Mr. Comey’s book to get the whole story. It’s seriously a good read.

But I want to zero in on a paragraph toward the end of Mr. Comey’s book. He and his wife Patrice were blessed with daughters and a son (Collin) who died as an infant in 1995. Collin’s death made Mr. Comey a more compassionate and caring man. He recognized that their pain, and the pain of their surviving children, called them to greater empathy to the suffering of others. Collin’s death not only made Mr. Comey a better husband and father, it made him a better law enforcement officer. It further emboldened him to do justice better.

In his book Mr. Comey wrote about his experience against the reality he saw with President Trump. He wrote this, and I want all Americans to read this:

I see no evidence that a lie ever caused Trump pain, or that he ever recoiled from causing another person pain, which is sad and frightening. Without all those things – without kindness to leaven toughness, without a balance of confidence and humility, without empathy, and without respect for truth – there is little chance President Trump can attract and keep the kind of people around him that every president needs to make wise decisions. That makes me sad for him, but it makes me worry for our country.

We all deserve better leadership. We all deserve a President that leads all of us, that values our values, and lives the values that we embody in the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless tempest-tost to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”