Political Irony

If there is one thing that defined Donald Trump’s campaign, it was his “America First” rhetoric. But it looks like that was just another lie.

Just a few days after becoming president, Trump signed a number of executive orders. One of the first ones reversed the Obama administration’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump bragged that it would create jobs. The same day, he also signed an order that pipelines would have to be built using American Steel. On February 23, Trump even told the CEO of US Steel that the Keystone Pipeline had to be built with American steel. And in other speeches, he said the same thing.

But this week, Trump reversed course and now says that Keystone XL doesn’t have to use American steel. He now claims that the executive order only applies to new pipelines, not pipelines already under construction. Which makes no sense. How can a pipeline that was canceled be under construction?

But here’s the kicker. One of the foreign companies who has a contract to supply steel for the pipeline is Evraz Steel, which is a Canadian subsidiary of a Russian company, Evraz PLC.

We now know that Vice President Mike Pence routinely used an AOL email account to conduct state business when he was governor of Indiana. Seriously. Including during the campaign when he was repeatedly attacking Hillary Clinton for not using a government email account.

But wait, there is a difference. While there is no evidence that Clinton’s email server was ever hacked, we know for sure that Pence’s account was hacked. And yet he kept using an AOL account after that. AOL accounts have been hacked many times.

We also know that Pence used his AOL account to discuss sensitive topics, such as security at the governor’s residence, and non-public information about terrorism from the FBI. As governor, Pence oversaw the Indiana state police, national guard, and department of homeland security, and would have regularly communicated sensitive information to and from federal authorities.

Hypocritically, the state refused to disclose many of the emails that were hacked, because they are too sensitive. So I guess that means that it is easier for hackers to see these confidential emails than the American people.

Trump’s National Security Advisor had to resign because he lied about contacts with the Russians. Now it looks like Trump’s Attorney General also lied about contacts with the Russians. After all the noise from Republicans about how Hillary Clinton should be in jail, not to mention impeaching Bill Clinton for lying, it will be interesting to see how they deal with Sessions lying under oath.

The best summary of what is going on comes from one of my favorite websites, Electoral Vote. Here is their report in its entirety:

Sessions Looks to Be in Deep Trouble

When Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was nominated by Donald Trump, he—like all nominees—was required to submit extensive supporting paperwork. Included therein was this question:

Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?

Sessions’ one-word answer was, “No.” Then, during his confirmation hearings, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) asked what Sessions would do if he learned that members of the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government during the course of the campaign. Sessions’ reply:

I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.

We now learn, thanks to reporting from the Washington Post, that the latter answer (and, quite possibly, the former) was not truthful. In fact, Sessions met at least twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who—his official title notwithstanding—is thought by some people to be one of the Kremlin’s foremost spies and spy recruiters. Those meetings took place in July and September; Sessions was well-ensconced as a Trump supporter and surrogate by the time of the first, and remained so at the time of the latter.

Sessions was, apparently, blindsided by the Post’s revelations, and over the course of the day on Wednesday, managed to sputter his way to several different responses. At one point, he called the story “false;” at another he said that he answered Franken in the manner that he did because he did not consider his conversations with Kislyak to be “relevant” to the committee’s questions. Eventually, Sessions settled on what looks to be his primary defense: That he did have the meetings with Kislyak, but that they were conducted as part of the then-Senator’s job as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and that no election-related matters were discussed. This explanation does not appear to stand up to scrutiny; the Post contacted the 26 members of the Committee, and each of the 20 who had responded as of Wednesday evening—including Chairman John McCain (R-AZ)—said they had not met with the Russian ambassador, and had no particular reason to do so.

Put bluntly, then, Sessions has perjured himself. Again, note his response to Franken: “I did not have communications with the Russians.” Not, “I did not discuss the election with the Russians,” nor, “I spoke to them, but only about the business of the Senate Armed Service Committee.” Even if he’s telling the truth about the content of the meetings (questionable), and truly thought they were not germane, he surely knows that it’s not his privilege—as someone giving testimony before Congress—to decide what is and is not relevant. And If Sessions is guilty of perjury, then he is therefore guilty of a “high crime and misdemeanor,” and so is subject to impeachment and removal from office. This was established, quite definitively, in the case of Bill Clinton, who was impeached for playing precisely the same sorts of word games (albeit in order to cover up for some extracurricular fun, as opposed to a possible conspiracy to manipulate a presidential election). During Clinton’s impeachment, one Republican senator was particularly insistent that, “I have no doubt that perjury qualifies under the Constitution as a high crime. It goes to the heart of the judicial system.” That Senator, of course, was Jeff Sessions.

Of course, politicians on both sides of the aisle are not so great about being consistent when the shoe is on the other foot. So while, by all evidence, Sessions should be impeached (or resign, which is what the Democrats are calling for), that doesn’t mean it will actually happen. Even if he keeps his job, however, it is now entirely impossible for a Sessions-led Justice Dept. to impartially investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. If he is allowed to not only keep his job, but also to run the investigation (as opposed to having an independent prosecutor appointed), then it will be corruption of a sort that we’ve not seen for a very long time, if ever.

Donald Trump’s proposed budget will increase military spending by $54 billion, while slashing the State Department (and almost certainly lots of other things).

But we already spend an insane amount of money on the military:

Even without the Trump bump, that’s four times more than the #2 country. In fact, the entire world (not counting the US) spends a grand total of around $950 billion. Trump’s proposed increase alone is almost equal to Russia’s entire military budget.

But what’s really ironic about this is that Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to significantly reduce our military commitments to other countries (including to NATO), so military spending should be going down.

Not only that, but a hunk of our current military spending is for tanks, aircraft, and ships that the Pentagon says it doesn’t even need. Why? Because it makes money for companies, who turn around and donate lots of money to Congressional campaigns.

Perhaps that is the answer to this riddle — the increased military spending is merely corporate welfare. After all, George W Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton, and starting the war in Iraq resulted in around $40 billion in contracts for his former company.

Trump says it is all about making us safer, but does anyone really believe that spending such huge amounts of money on weapons (including nuclear weapons) is going to make us safer?

Besides, I don’t think Trump cares whether we are actually safer. If he did, he wouldn’t destroy the State Department.

Build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico? Block refugees from entering the US? Ban even visitors from Muslim countries?

And that’s just what the Trump administration says they want to do. It doesn’t include recent incidents like the son of legendary boxing champion Muhammad Ali being detained for hours when entering the US at a Florida airport (after speaking at a Black History Month event in Montego Bay, Jamaica), even though he was born in Philadelphia and lives in Florida, had his US passport with him, and has no criminal record.

His mother, who was traveling on the same flight, was allowed through after she showed immigration officials a photo of herself with her late husband. However, Muhammad Ali Jr. was questioned for two hours, and asked repeatedly “Where did you get your name from?” and “Are you Muslim?” To give you an idea of how disgusting this is, can you imagine if an American citizen returning to the US was detained for hours and repeatedly asked “Are you a Jew?”

So, why are we thinking of spending tens of billions of dollars to build a 2000 mile long wall, hire 5000 more border agents and 10,000 more ICE agents, build more prisons to hold people we round up, not to mention the money that will be spent on lawsuits because of little details like the fact that our constitution prohibits discriminating against people based on their religion. Are we facing some kind of existential crisis? Are we in immediate danger from immigrants, either legal or illegal?

The answer is a resounding no. The immigration crisis is a myth.

First, let’s look at illegal immigration. Beginning in 2008, the US saw a dramatic outflow of illegal immigrants caused by the recession. Yes, that’s right, undocumented aliens from Mexico returned home (Mitt Romney might even say they “self deported”). Even after the recession ended, we are still seeing a net outflow of undocumented aliens. So if the border wall does anything at all (which it won’t — around half of illegal aliens entered the US with a visa and just didn’t leave, and there are already many tunnels underneath existing border walls) it will be to keep these undocumented workers inside the US.

Even if you thought there was an illegal immigration problem in the early 2000s, we already pretty much solved that problem through increased deportation, and (most significantly) making it much harder to hire illegal aliens.

As for Trump’s Muslim ban, it is plainly ridiculous. Trump’s ban only affected seven countries, and we haven’t had any successful terrorist attacks by anyone from any of those countries in decades (since before 9/11). We have had terrorist attacks by citizens from other countries, but the ban was not applied to them. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE. Could it be because Trump has business interests in those countries?

In fact, the Trump administration asked the Department of Homeland Security to provide evidence that people from the seven countries in his ban pose a terrorism threat, but the DHS found that the threat was minimal.

Not only that, but unconstitutional restrictions against Muslims are more likely to cause problems than solve them. They will further isolate us from our friends an allies in the rest of the world, and inflame already simmering hatred.

In conclusion, Trump’s proposed actions against immigrants and visitors from other countries are expensive solutions in search of a problem. When did we forget that we are a nation of immigrants, and start blaming people from “other” countries for any and all of our problems?

© Jim Morin