Dahlia Lithwick analyzes the Trump strategy and reveals the magnitude of amateurhood Trump has reached when running a government, and it’s on Slate:
For good measure, the president added: “I don’t ever want to call a court biased and we haven’t had a decision yet. But courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right.” In a half-sentence-long feint at decorum, Trump said, “I will not comment on the statements made by certainly one judge.” He then continued as per usual: “But I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court in terms of respect for the court, they’d do what they should be doing. It’s so sad.” He also took to Twitter to suggest, again, that a future terror attack would be the responsibility of the judges hearing the appeal: [Twitter statement omitted]
To be clear, what the president is doing is blaming the court for politicizing the court. By acting like a court.
Nobody should be surprised that there are now reports of threats against the federal judges who heard the appeal at the 9th circuit. Those threats have prompted federal and local law enforcement to increase security protection for those judges. The White House dispatched Leonard Leo, one of Trump’s principal advisers on his Supreme Court nomination, to assure CNN that it was a “huge stretch” to connect President Trump’s ongoing attacks on judges with any physical threats to judges. “President Trump is not threatening a judge, and he’s not encouraging any form of lawlessness,” Leo said. “What he is doing is criticizing a judge for what he believes to be a failure to follow the law properly.”
To be clear, this is what you do in the private sector: deploy all your resources, even those of dubious origin, and let blow. This is not what you do as a government representative. Why?
- Governance is a team game. You work together, and in those areas where you’re expected to politely accept blowback, you do it – because the alternative can lead to violence, even to civil war. And governance is also very difficult. Each branch has its duties – and each branch must respect the other. The judiciary is responsible for accepting and judging complaints about the other two (among other duties), and this is not easy work. Sometimes they have to disappoint sincere people who are trying to solve important problems. We have a framework to help us get through those sorts of problems – so we don’t end up with warlords running loose, taking the wealth of their subjects without regard to justice, to be blunt. Trump stamping his foot in frustration is not a way forward, it’s a signal that he doesn’t realize that private sector methods are inappropriate in the governmental sector. How do we know this? Now we have death threats against judges. While certainly not unheard of, it’s appalling, and that leads to point #2.
- Judges are human. A person under threat does not always perform optimally. Obvious statement, isn’t it? But in the judiciary, that leads to two problems. First, the judgment may not be proper. Fine, you say, a higher court can correct it, right? Maybe not – if they receive “proactive death threats” (which may be the phrase of the day). And that leads to the second problem: a decision at a high enough level is a precedent, and judges hate to break precedent. Not that it’s impossible – but it’s hard to do. So if we have a decision influenced by the threat of violence entered into the body of legal decisions, then that threat of violence is going to have knock-on effects for years afterwards.
I see that this Leo Leonard is claiming this is just criticism. Someone (CNN)needs to slap him upside the head and remind him that criticizing the judiciary in such a way as to generate death threats is not acceptable. Period, end of discussion. Go trot back to your boss and instruct him in the ways of proper behavior – or quit your job, because you’re not doing it properly.
Yeah, I’m mad. The judiciary is the bulwark of our freedoms, and now it’s under attack by Trump and the GOP, who are too cowardly to own up to it. Breathe, try to remember they’re fellow Americans….
