How can anybody be surprised by anything Donald Trump does at this point? Bookended by indefensible pardons from two presidents, he took a lot of questionable actions on the day of his second inauguration.
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Perhaps the most shocking thing about a topsy-turvy Inauguration Day was that any of the political experts whose job it is to know stuff were surprised by anything that happened. Where have these guys been hiding? Did they think that Donald Trump’s first popular election victory (which he claims was the result of divine intervention) would moderate him? Or the absence of “adults in the room”? Or the Supreme Court decision granting him immunity for official acts?
What seemed to catch a lot of pundits off guard was that Trump capped his day by pardoning, commuting the sentences, or dismissing the cases of more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol on his behalf on January 6, 2021, including those convicted of seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers.
Apparently, some politicos had expected more narrow pardons and not that the president would free all of the people he has referred to as “hostages.”
Again, what would lead anybody to believe that an emboldened Trump wouldn’t choose the most radical option?
To be honest, we were a bit surprised that he didn’t also award Presidential Medals of Freedom to some of the Proud Boys who assisted his coup.
But let’s start with Trump’s predecessor.
A day that ended with indefensible pardons also began with them.
Joe Biden has really developed a knack for making terrible decisions at inopportune times. Therefore, it only made sense that he waited until the last moment to issue preemptive pardons for more of his family members.
That not only ensured that it looked like a coverup but also reminded people that Trump is not the only one who will use his pardon pen recklessly. At some point, we need to have a conversation about this. If Americans can’t elect presidents who use their powers responsibly, maybe it’s high time to take some of those powers away instead of expanding them.
Speaking of, perhaps the most egregious (yet not at all unexpected) thing that happened was that, amid a flurry of executive orders, Trump tried to take away birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution.
Essentially, that’s the same as a Democrat simply declaring that the Second Amendment only applies to actual militias.
This effort will almost certainly fail. If it does not, and the Supreme Court reverses more than a century of precedent, the country is in even bigger trouble.
However, not everything Trump did was an assault on the rule of law (although there was plenty of that). Some of the things were just ridiculous, like declaring that the Gulf of Mexico should now be called the “Gulf of America,” or that the security clearances of 50 former intelligence officials who were involved in the Hunter Biden laptop saga should be revoked (readers who don’t know about this sordid episode should count themselves lucky).
Plenty others, however, were disconcerting. For example, while we are on the subject of security clearances, with the stroke of his pen, Trump ordered the White House counsel to provide a list of people who must be given temporary top security clearances without going through the regular vetting process.
In light of the caliber of people the president is surrounding himself with, that seems like a useful tool for Trump, who, as a convicted felon, would ordinarily have a problem obtaining such a security clearance if he were not the commander in chief.
And on and on it went on Monday.
For example, Trump also initiated the US’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement to combat climate change.
At least he stayed in NATO, for now… perhaps to better plan for the invasions of Greenland and Canada.
It wouldn’t surprise us one bit.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
