He has lawyers for that
Donald Trump is not a man of letters. Not beyond what will fit on a red ball cap. So when NBC’s Kristen Welker asked in his “Meet the Press” interview broadcast today whether he was required to uphold the U.S. Constitution, he replied, “I don’t know.
Trump pays lawyers to do his knowing.
That’s unsurprising since he made clear last week that he doesn’t even know what’s in the Declaration of Independence he recently had installed on his office wall.
This man could not pass a citizenship test.
What little Trump does “know” is that he has to rid the country of some of the worst people on Earth. No, not reporters he’s dubbed enemies of the people. He’ll get to them later. He’s starting with non-citizens. Legally in the country, illegally in the country, permanent residents with green cards, doesn’t matter. They’ve got to go.
That he’s been trying to deport not exclusively murderers and drug dealers, but college students expressing opinions as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, is of no consequence. Deportation is too good for them.
Welker pointed out that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment states “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” That guarantee is not just for citizens, as the Supreme Court has confirmed. Trump wants undesirables gone. Period. On his team’s say-so.
Trump responded by suggesting that with so many people to deport, respecting their constitutional rights would just slow him down:
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.
“But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
Trump pays lawyers to read the Constitution he swore an oath to uphold — twice. It has too many letters. The Declaration has fewer, but obviously he’s not blocked out time to have them read that to him either. With Trump, the buck always stops somewhere else.
And it’s not 2-3 million trials. It’s basic hearings to determine if Trump’s desaparecidos are who the government claims they are before removing them from the country and separating mothers, fathers, and children, perhaps permanently. But legal process is slow. Democracy is messy. That’s why Republicans have grown weary of both, of doing things the right way, the legal way.
Trump is in a job he doesn’t want to do, tied, in theory, to documents he hasn’t studied and can’t be bothered to understand and follow. He is many things: thin-skinned, insecure, needy, a narcissist, a career con man, a pathological liar, a convicted felon. He is the most “appalling ignorant” man ever to occupy the Oval Office. But he has one extraordinary skill: selling himself as something he’s not.
He sold himself as a successful businessman on a reality TV show for years. Trump even sold himself to half the country’s voters last fall as a man who should be president — a man with 34 felony convictions in a job he doesn’t even want to do. He wants the power, yes, and to stay out of jail, but not the job. He is at heart an autocrat. The former reality TV star wants to be king. He wants the power of a Roman emperor to decide life and death with a flick of his thumb. When he’s not using it to order another Diet Coke.
He has servants fetch it for him. Some are probably lawyers.
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