On Thursday, Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” had two interesting tidbits. First:
In 2020, when Utah senator Mitt Romney voted to convict Donald Trump on one of the charges on which the House impeached him, Trump tweeted a video calling him a “Democrat secret asset” who “tried to infiltrate Trump’s administration” while “posing as a Republican.” Romney was the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee.
Which made me think: So, my Trump-supporting friends, did you believe that? Is Mitt Romney a Democrat secret asset?
Hmmm …
Then there were the administration’s recent decisions to have the military destroy three Venezuelan boats that may have been operated by drug smugglers. Of course the police have the right to arrest drug smugglers (if the police have jurisdiction and probable cause), but does the military have the right to assassinate, rather than arrest, alleged drug smugglers from a country with which we are not at war?
Cox Richardson quoted John Yoo, the Republican author of the infamous memos justifying torture in the administration of Bush the Younger, on this issue:
John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush who wrote the legal justification for torture during the war on terror, pushed back on the extreme powers Trump is claiming to kill those he labels terrorists. “There has to be a line between crime and war,” Yoo said. “We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.”
Which made me think: So, my Trump-supporting friends, has anyone yet convinced you that these assassinations were legal?
I then left Cox Richardson’s leads and went to Bloomberg Law:
Three current [Department of Labor] employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg Law that colleagues who took the Department of Government Efficiency’s “Fork in the Road” offer earlier this year have returned as full-time workers, after collecting their full pay and benefits for months without performing their job duties.
The agency’s internal website for processing employee IT requests also has a banner reading “Welcoming Back Returning DRP Employees,” according to a screenshot shared with Bloomberg Law.
That’s a good deal for the employees: A long vacation, on the government payroll, after which you can rejoin the government, doing precisely the same job that you had theoretically left.
Can I have that deal, too?
And, my Trump-supporting friends, does that seem like government efficiency to you?
I then left the easy sources of news and ventured out on my own.
At the start of Trump’s term, there were about 700 immigration judges available to process the huge backlog of immigration cases pending to decide whether folks can lawfully enter the United States. After a series of firings and forced self-resignations, there are now about 600 judges left to decide those cases. That’s not nearly enough, so Trump has decided to enlist members of the military’s JAG Corps to serve as immigration judges. Members of the JAG Corps don’t necessarily know anything about immigration law, and there are legal questions whether members of the military can be used for civilian purposes (such as serving as immigration judges).
So, my Trump-supporting friends, are you convinced that firing qualified immigration judges for no reason, and then replacing them with unqualified, and possibly illegal, military lawyers (who were presumably doing other necessary tasks for the military) is an intelligent policy?
Trump says that American cities run by Democratic mayors are crime-ridden hellholes. Trump’s solution to this is to send in members of the National Guard, who aren’t trained in crime control, to keep order.
So, my Trump-supporting friends, does it really make sense to send in the National Guard, on a temporary deployment at considerable expense, to serve this purpose, or would it make more sense — if our large cities are truly crime-infested hellholes — for the federal government to give cash grants to cities to permit them to hire and train more cops?
How about all the other ridiculous things that Trump has asked you to believe? Did you really believe, first, that the rioters on January 6 were members of antifa, as Trump insisted? Did you then change your mind to believe, as Trump later instructed, that the rioters were members of the FBI? Did you then later change your mind again to believe, as the fearless leader insisted, that the rioters had actually done nothing wrong at all and deserved to be pardoned?
What will you believe tomorrow?
Did you really believe, as Trump insisted, that Trump had not signed a note in the birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday? Did you believe that there was in fact no birthday book at all? Did you believe that the Wall Street Journal, which had the temerity to suggest that a note signed by Trump existed, should be sued for defamation? Now that the note has been produced, and you’ve seen it with your own eyes, what are you thinking? Trump still says it’s not his signature; do you believe that? If so, just who forged the note, 20 years ago, and had it inserted in the book, and for what purpose? When Trump changes his story again, will you believe the next ridiculous thing that he says?
Is there an outside chance that you realize there’s something wrong with this?
Or is Trump telling you not to worry?
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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