Opponents of President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency are practically orgasmic over his statement during his press conference that “I didn’t need to do this . . . . ” That statement supposedly will be devastating in court as an admission that there is no actual emergency.
But as with so many things #NeverTrump, the words are plucked out of a longer sentence and statement in which Trump makes the case for the declaration being necessary because a wall/fencing cannot wait given the crisis. The full statement, which I quote below, will be the one in front of a court, and an appeals court, and ultimately the Supreme Court.
Here’s the supposedly “damning” clip that has sent the anti-Trump #Resistance and #NeverTrump loons into a near-orgasmic frenzy:
Politico reports on the Democrats’ “pounce” on this isolated statement.
Those impromptu statements by the president — delivered during a sprawling news conference in the White House Rose Garden without the assistance of a teleprompter — have in less than 24 hours become Exhibit A in Democratic lawmakers’ arguments against what they view as unconstitutional overreach of executive powers by the Trump administration.“He admits it’s a #FakeTrumpEmergency,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote on Twitter. “Hear him say it: “I *didn’t need* to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) offered up via Twitter a courtroom transcript of a potential legal challenge to Trump’s order.House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Friday sent a letter to the president, co-signed by the committee’s vice chair and subcommittee chairs, “to demand answers” on the emergency declaration and request that White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Justice Department officials testify before Congress regarding the announcement.”We write to express our alarm over your proclamation … and your reassignment of funds approved by Congress for other purposes in order to access certain funds denied to you by Congress for the construction of a border wall,” the lawmakers wrote.”We are particularly troubled in light of your statement today that ‘I didn’t need to do this, but I would rather do it much faster.'”
This clip is pretty typical Trump speak, actually, and for anyone who listens to the full presser and is used to listening to the president’s sometimes rambling statements, it’s pretty clear that he means that he didn’t need to declare the national emergency for the 2020 election. He emphasizes that the idea is to get the wall built faster than he’d have been able to do it with an “obstructionist” Democrat opposition who are focused on defeating him in 2020.
Here’s the NBC reporter’s question and the president’s response (transcript via WaPo):
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to say when — in the past, when President Obama tried to use executive action as it related to immigration, you said the whole concept of executive order, it’s not the way the country’s supposed to be run. You said you’re supposed to go through Congress and make a deal.Will you concede that you were unable to make the deal that you had promised in the past and that the deal you’re ending up with now from Congress is less than what you could have had…TRUMP: No. Look…QUESTION: … before a 35-day shutdown?I went through Congress, I made a deal. I got almost $1.4 billion when I wasn’t supposed to get $1 — not $1. He’s not going to get $1. Well, I got $1.4 billion, but I’m not happy with it. I also got billions and billions of dollars for other things — port of entries, lots of different things, a — the purchase of drug equipment, more than we were even requesting.In fact, the primary fight was on the wall. Everything else we have so much, as I said, I don’t know what to do with it; we have so much money. But on the wall, they skimped. So I did — I was successful in that sense, but I want to do it faster.I could do the wall over a longer period of time, I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster. And I don’t have to do it for the election; I’ve already done a lot of wall for the election 2020. And the only reason we’re up here talking about this is because of the election, because they want to try and win an election which it looks like they’re not going to be able to do.And this is one of the ways they think they can possibly win is by obstruction and a lot of other nonsense. And I think that I just want to get it done faster, that’s all.
Notably, just prior to this Q&A, Trump said: “You know, we fight all over the world to create borders for countries, but we don’t create a border for our own country.”
Watch the full presser (the above begins around 28:40):
Throughout his responses to the media’s questions, the president repeated that the illegal aliens pouring across our southern border are an invasion, and that the wall will make it easier to keep Americans safe from gangs, drugs, and assorted crimes committed by illegal aliens.
In short, throughout this presser—as he did throughout his campaign and has throughout his presidency—Trump leaves no doubt at all that the border crisis is a national emergency and that he fully believes (knows) that to be the case. Lamenting that the declaration of emergency could have been avoided seems perfectly reasonable to me.
And frankly, he’s right, he would never have declared a national emergency had Congress backed him on his key campaign promise. They didn’t, so they left him little choice but to take this action, an action that shouldn’t have been needed, but clearly was due to Democrat obstruction and—we must also acknowledge—that of weak-willed Republicans who failed to keep their own campaign promises in this regard.
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