Trump’s national emergency declaration isn’t going over well with the country. Here’s what we know after the weekend:
- 16 states filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Trump’s declaration. The case seeks to prevent Trump from moving forward with unappropriated wall construction while the declaration is challenged (on multiple fronts) in the courts.
- 8 GOP senators voiced their opposition to the move over the weekend—but will their objection to the clearly illegal declaration translate into a vote to block the measure through law?
- Remember—the emergency declaration is illegal. Here’s why.
There is no emergency at the southern border. Lawmakers know it, Trump knows it, and the American people know it.
SOMEONE DELETE HIS ACCOUNT.
Trump tweeted more than 35 times between Saturday morning and the start of the workday today.
He repeatedly complained about the supposed “Witch Hunt” being orchestrated against him (aka Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation). We’d note that there are at least five demonstrated examples of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller’s investigation has so far yielded 37 indictments and 7 guilty pleas.
He spent the rest of the weekend condemning the media as the “enemy of the people,” praising Fox News, and viciously attacking former acting F.B.I. Director Andrew McCabe for his public statements questioning Trump’s alarming loyalty to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There’s a common thread through much of it: Trump’s panicked denials of any wrongdoing connected to Russia and general detachment from reality.
To give a sense of just how high the stakes are in Trump’s corrupt relationship with Putin, consider this from former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe: After a North Korean ballistic missile test, Trump claimed the reports were “a hoax.” Per McCabe: “[Trump] said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”
As Trump heads toward his next summit with Kim Jong-un on North Korea’s nuclear program, this is also far from the first time we’ve seen evidence of Putin influencing Trump on the subject.
It raises the question again: What does Putin have on Trump? And why does Trump keep rejecting our closest allies and his own intelligence community to side with Putin and other foreign dictators?
See new, extensive reporting from The New York Times on Trump’s “Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him.”