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Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#281

Post by bitkrieg »

pm90 wrote: post #159
throwaway5752 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of us on both sides of the former partisan political spectrum are wonder what - if any - boundaries Trump supporters have past which they would not defend the actions of this administration.

There aren't any, and I'm serious about it. Unless Trump does something that is totally and obviously anti-populist, like raise taxes for everyone by 20% or send in the National Guard into a city. It took me a while to understand why but you kinda have to see where Trump supporters get their worldview. Unfortunately, they use Facebook/Twitter a lot, and have been bombarded for years and years by outrageous fake news.…

The term "fake news" is totally misleading because it conceals political agenda behind it. Yet it is all over the place. Did everybody forgot what propaganda is?

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#282

Post by koheripbal »

ivl wrote: post #2

If I understand it right this is the first time an AG has been relieved for purely political reasons. If the AG doesn't think it's likely they'll win a defense, that usually doesn't cause an issue. As an edit: it probably wouldn't have been reasonable for her to put up an intentionally weak case, but if the order isn't able to stand up in court, then what? The major worry for me is Trump's seeking to punish anyone wh…

There's a difference between giving your boss honest feedback, and being obstructionist. Encouraging honesty is great, but at the end of the day, you still need to follow orders.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#283

Post by bobwaycott »

wtbob wrote: post #276

She had two legitimate options: execute the President's instructions if she thought they are legal and moral, or resign if she thought they are illegal or immoral. She doesn't have the option to refuse to do her job. Ministers and government officials resign all the time when they believe that their government's position is in error. N.b.: I did not vote for Trump; I am not certain that everything in his immigration-…

> She doesn't have the option to refuse to do her job.

Oh, yes she does. The head of the DOJ, acting or actual, should be relied upon to raise a notable fuss when an executive is determined to be stepping outside the bounds of legality. Same goes for every other official who takes the oath of office. They take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution, not an executive's agenda. Resigning is not defending and upholding the Constitution. If, however, an order belived to be illegal and unconstitutional is challenged and subsequently upheld as legal and constitutional, and a person continues to object to carrying out their duties accordingly (based on moral or other grounds), then they should likely follow their conscience and resign. But not beforehand.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#284

Post by drzaiusapelord »

mordant wrote: post #216
davesque wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't choose Trump. He trailed the leading candidate by almost three million votes, an unprecedented amount. Making such statements is a slap in the face of the majority of American voters. There are also still substantial questions remaining as to how much assistance Trump may have received from foreign governments in achieving his victory.

> He trailed the leading candidate by almost three million votes i.e., he won the popular vote, except for California .

He won by 80,000 votes in 3 states. That's how the EC works. Holding up California, our richest state, as unwelcome is un-american as most of Trump's actions. Why do Trump supporters hate our most successful state yet somehow give free passes to southern hellholes that have little more than dying towns and meth addiction specialists. Its extremely dismissive of millions of votes and the difference between Trump and Clinton is the largest in history for an EC upset. That should worry people. Invalidating 3m voters in any other country would be something the US would criticize. When it happens here its shrugged away with dismissive attitudes by Trump supporters who refuse to see a problem. Of course, if their guy lost the EC and won the popular vote, they'd be singing a different tune.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#285

Post by walljm »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #112
TenOhms wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find worrying is she ordered that the DOJ not support the President without any clear conviction that the law was unconstitutional, it smelled of an entirely politically motivated action not grounded in US law.

Except that it isn't a law. It's an executive order. The President isn't a dictator and doesn't get to rule any department by decree. If the secretary feels that the order is illegal, they can refuse to follow it, and get forced to resign, but then the President would still need to find someone else to follow the order.

The executive order was backed by the law though. The President does have the powers he exercised, at least, near as I can tell from the US Code cited in the order. I don't necessarily like the order, or how it was carried out, but I'm not sure her actions were justified on the grounds she cited.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/execu... and https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12/subchap...

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#286

Post by wtbob »

grey-area wrote: post #190
cookiecaper wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're reading the same story and coming to different conclusions. I don't dispute that Trump at one point said "Muslim ban". Giuliani appears to indicate that Trump knew this was illegal in the form that it was literally said it on the campaign trail and that Trump called him up and asked him to figure out how to implement what was meant , not necessarily what was literally said, in a legal fashion -- "seriously, but…

According to Guilanni, and to the president himself, that's exactly what he meant. There's just the small matter that what he wants violates the law and human decency, so they've had to temper it, for now. President Trump has turned out to want literally what candidate Trump proposed. Thiel was wrong in a fundamental way. As to your supposed impartiality I think you should be honest about your support for Trump, not…

> There's just the small matter that what he wants violates the law

No, that's exactly what the Giuliani story doesn't indicate: it indicates the exact opposite, which is that they did this legally.

Incidentally, I think it's possible to support neither the President nor the media. The National Review had a recent article, whose title was something like 'Trump's order is wrong, but the Left is insane.' It's entirely possible to disagree with everyone who's shouting.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#287

Post by vivekd »

dragonwriter wrote: post #35
cookiecaper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point. Trump has dismissed the acting AG for refusing to execute the laws. As far as I know, Ms. Yates's job as acting AG is to preside over the enforcement of the law, not to decide whether it is constitutional (there is a process for that, and Ms. Yates is not in a position to make that determination) nor to decide whether it is good policy (as she is neither a legislator nor the chief execu…

> Trump has dismissed the acting AG for refusing to execute the laws. An E.O. that conflicts with statute or the Constitution is not law, in fact, it a violation of the law. > As far as I know, Ms. Yates's job as acting AG is to preside over the enforcement of the law, not to decide whether it is constitutional Deciding whether the is a reasonable legal argument for an action before defending it and not defending it…

>An E.O. that conflicts with statute or the Constitution is not law, in fact, it a violation of the law.

That's not up to the Attorney General to decide, that's up to the Supreme court to decide.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#288

Post by bobwaycott »

rayiner wrote: post #229
Turing_Machine wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without reviewing the statements in question, I would guess that he also understands that the Attorney General would likely resign or be fired in such a situation. How else do you imagine that it could possibly work? Do you think that any President would do otherwise? Especially when the acting A.G. was a holdover from a previous administration who was going to be out the door in a couple of days anyway?

That's not really where the consequences stop flowing though. Yes, the President has a right to fire an AG that refuses to implement a President's policy. At the same time, the public may draw certain inferences from that decision. If a big oil company fired its top lawyer for refusing to do something she though violated environmental laws, very reasonable inferences could be made about the leadership. The US Attorne…

The criticism also hinges on the rather unbelievably public statement of "betrayal", particularly as that dovetails with Spicer's statement that people should "get with the program or get out". This makes political purge a rather inevitable conclusion, and we aren't even 2 weeks in.

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#289

Post by ako »

koheripbal wrote: post #282
ivl wrote: post #2

If I understand it right this is the first time an AG has been relieved for purely political reasons. If the AG doesn't think it's likely they'll win a defense, that usually doesn't cause an issue. As an edit: it probably wouldn't have been reasonable for her to put up an intentionally weak case, but if the order isn't able to stand up in court, then what? The major worry for me is Trump's seeking to punish anyone wh…

There's a difference between giving your boss honest feedback, and being obstructionist. Encouraging honesty is great, but at the end of the day, you still need to follow orders.

"just following orders...."

Re: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General

#290

Post by patrickk »

cryoshon wrote: post #244
zigzigzag wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think fake news is a useful term, it never has been. The media has been flooded with both outright fake news and more importantly missing news for years, when it was supporting the Democrat world view. For instance, just go look at how often you can read the Russia "invaded" Ukraine or Russia "invaded" Crimea. The Russian army is huge and what's left of the Ukrainian army is made of fresh conscripts. If those…

>just go look at how often you can read the Russia "invaded" Ukraine or Russia "invaded" Crimea. putting your soldiers onto someone else's turf without permission equals invasion...

Exactly, there were "rebels" driving around in Russian armoured vehicles, using modern Russian military equipment, just without insignias on their uniforms. This story[1] is one of many from a few years back about poorly-disguised Russian troops who were deployed in Ukraine.

Vice News did an amusing piece of reporting where they tracked down a Russian soldier who was deployed in Ukraine based on his social media presence[2].

The idea that Russian troops weren't involved is laughable, obvious propaganda that was aimed mostly at the Russian population, not really meant to fool the rest of the world.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/defence-and-security-blog/2...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zssIFN2mso

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