Trump has made little secret [of the fact] that his planned White House ballroom is a top priority, invoking the project more frequently than most other issues. And in recent weeks he has raged at anyone — including a federal judge, a Senate official and a local historian — whose actions threaten to slow construction.
Cool that a fancy party palace is a top priority, because what could possibly be more important?
On Monday, the president shared on social media a copy of a legal filing that closely resembled his own words and contended that the weekend’s shooting outside the White House campus proved the need for a ballroom.
“Without the construction of this great Project, the President cannot safely conduct the business of the United States,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche and two other senior Justice Department officials lawyers wrote, urging a federal judge to dissolve his order that could soon halt construction. “This is a terrible, tremendously harmful case to the United States of America, and all it stands for!”
Hahahaha “closely resembled his own words” – the words don’t resemble his words, they are his words. Nobody else would say “terrible, tremendously harmful” or “this great Project” – that’s pure dodo clumsy excitable Trump. Not to mention the exclamation point.
The filing also mocked the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to halt the project, claiming that the group had been “defunded by Congress due to a total lack of respect for them.”
Pure Trump. Recognizable from a block away.
Experts in constitutional law and government oversight see a pattern in Trump’s behavior.
“Simply put, as President Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said, he believes he can do literally anything,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, wrote in an email. “And he attacks anyone who tries to stop him.”
Oooh I see that pattern too, and I’m not an expert in constitutional law and government oversight!
Asked whether Trump has dictated Blanche’s filings in the legal case, which so closely resemble his own rhetoric, the White House and the Justice Department have not denied it.
How cringe.
Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly deprecated Alison Hoagland, the historic preservationist who helped the National Trust bring its lawsuit against the ballroom, as “a woman walking her dog,” saying that she had no standing in the case.
Well yeah obviously women don’t have standing.
Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization focused on strengthening government, said in an interview Monday that Trump acts as if he sees no distinction between his role as a private citizen and as the nation’s chief executive.
“It’s such a misunderstanding of his responsibility to the public and the nature of our constitutional system,” Stier said, adding that Trump feels empowered to pursue his personal priorities. “He’s surrounded himself with people who are willing to enable that, and those that aren’t, he fires.”
That’s putting it rather politely. There is misunderstanding there no doubt, because Trump understands very little, but what he’s doing is much more a matter of will than of cognition. He does what he wants to do, because he wants to do it. Understanding doesn’t really play much of a role either way.
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