But those are simply examples of lawbreaking.
In other words, he could do the same thing without executive orders – the essential element there, according to you, is the willingness to break the law and avoid consequences by unfettered use of the pardon power. That’s not really a discussion of executive orders.
The firsts sentence I bolded is not at all what Czarcasm wrote. Not at all. It’s so far off base it deserves the description “not even wrong”.
The second sentence I bolded is not at all what Czarcasm has argued. It also deserves the label “not even wrong”.
Well, you’re asking for details on hypothetical Executive Orders, which is sort of unsatisfying but it’s hot and there’s air conditioning here in the computer room, so … ok, I’ll play.
Let’s say on his first day in office, Donald wants everyone to celebrate. SO he issues his first Executive Order saying that MacDonald’s has to give a free strawberry milkshake to anyone who wants one. (Shut up, it’s my hypothetical. It’s hot as balls, here.) Donald promises to pay for the ice cream, in the EO, but he neglects to explain how.
It’s a stupid order and all the grown ups in the room roll their eyes at him while explaining that no, it doesn’t count. It doesn’t count - obviously. It’s unconstitutional, it’s an overreach of Presidential authority, and everyone knows that Donald isn’t going to pay for shit, even on a government credit card. Donald isn’t listening. I mean - of course, he isn’t. Donald is not in the Listening To Other People Business.
But now there’s a problem. “Everyone” heard on the news that there was free ice cream. People start showing up demanding their free ice cream. Some people want seconds. Some people want chocolate. Some people want a sundae and fries with their milkshake. MacDonalds, a major US corporation, is screwed no matter what they do. Plus, people are showing up at Wendy’s and Burger King, demanding their strawberry milkshakes - which Wendy’s doesn’t even serve.
There you go. Hypothetical Executive Order #1 just caused major headaches, economic damage and ill will, because Donald is a moron with approval issues.
So, that was fun. After the ice cream, and with First Day On the Job energy, Donald decides to get busy with the next item on his agenda. He issues **Hypothetical Executive Order #2: The Immediate arrest and imprisonment of Hillary Clinton. **
Again, all the adults in the room just shake their heads. It’s an illegal order and no rational law enforcement officer is going to pursue it.
But what about the irrational law enforcement officers? What about, for example, the Constitutional Sherrifs, who believe that they are the highest constitutional authority in their County, and that, therefore, they are free to oppose or override federal oversight? What if they decide to follow this directive from the president being as they consider themselves above federal officer?
Or there’s these guys - a bunch of randos with Sov Cit slogans who tried to arrest their local County Commisioners. These turkeys appointed themselves “Clayton County Citizen’s Oversight Committee” and showed up trying to boss the actual police officers around. It went nowhere.
And probably, Hypothetical Executive Order #2 would go no where either, in the end. But in the immediate aftermath, it would encourage an army of Marlon Randos to form posses and interfere with actual law enforcement officers, demanding Clinton’s arrest. When Clinton is not immediately placed in the Dunking Stool, it would engender more ignorant anger and distrust about the role of Federal Government - and honestly, I don’t know how much more ignorance the American Experiment can withstand.
So ok, that’s two Hypothetical Executive Orders. That’s about enough work for the day. Let’s just knock off one more and take Ivanka out for dinner.
Hypothetical Executive Order #3: American troops will only be sent abroad to aid our allies if the allies agree to reimburse us for our expenses (to be determined by us, later.)
It’s stupid. It’s shortsighted. It encourages Russian aggression. It threatens the start of a new world war. It hangs our decades old NATO alliance out to dry.
But - he’s the CIC. American troops don’t go anywhere unless he says so. And he’s several times now suggested that he doesn’t care about upholding NATO. Plus, he like Vladimir Putin. He wouldn’t really care if Putin wants to invade … I don’t know. Lithuania? That’s a loser country, right? Who even gives a shit. They should be so lucky to get invaded by a great guy like Putin. Best thing that could happen to them. Of course … if they want to make a contribution … we’ll think about it.
So there you go. Three hypothetical Executive Orders that would cause varying degrees of headache and destruction. Of course, it’s all “What If …” but we knew that at the start of the exercise.
The point is - ignorant and poorly thought out attempts at Executive orders could cause confusion, anger and yes, even damaging, results, as the saner people in the planet are left holding the bag for an ignorant sociopath whose only goal is to increase his own fame and fortune.
Oh thought of another one - Hypothetical Executive Order #4: All current lawsuits against President Donald J Trump are dismissed because of the potential for bias against him.
Well I admit that Czarcasm’s posts have been lacking in substance such that it’s hard to determine what he is actually trying to say, but if you’re taking on the Whisperer role maybe I can run you through the sequence and you can let me know how it measures up.
Czarcasm believes Trump would be a poor president. He opposes Trump’s potential presidency for a number of reasons I’m sure. These reasons include bad outcomes for the country. Of course, from here a little extrapolation is required because there was scant detail about just what those reasons were, or what those bad outcomes would be. We do have this though:
So Czarcasm believes Trump would be effective in shaping deals where he comes ot ahead and others take “the brunt” whatever that means. Czarcasm also believes that Trump would be effective at advancing Trump’s brand. Of course, if Trump were president it would be reasonable to think that his brand would be correlated with the outcomes in the country, but there it is.
So Czarcasm believes Trump will be effective at some things, those that would advance Trump at the expense of the country, in some way yet unexplained. With me so far? So then we have this:
Yes, “worst possible outcome imaginable” is hyperbole. Did you think I was being precise there? In any event, the thrust of the statement holds - Czarcasm believes that Trump will be effective in some way that will lead to bad outcomes for the country. I don’t think there is a lot of evidence for this, and there is nothing much being offered.
Let’s move on to the second statement:
Are you saying that Czarcasm isn’t arguing that Trump would be able to do bad stuff? I mean, that’s the very basis for opposition to his candidacy, no? Then there’s this:
Here Czarcasm is arguing against the proposition that Trump would be ineffective.
So to sum up, your criticism that my interpretation of Czarcasm’s posts are off base are wrong.
You had 4 examples of EOs:
[ol]
[li]first Executive Order saying that MacDonald’s has to give a free strawberry milkshake to anyone who wants one.[/li][li]Hypothetical Executive Order #2: The Immediate arrest and imprisonment of Hillary Clinton. [/li][li]Hypothetical Executive Order #3: American troops will only be sent abroad to aid our allies if the allies agree to reimburse us for our expenses (to be determined by us, later.)[/li][li]Hypothetical Executive Order #4: All current lawsuits against President Donald J Trump are dismissed because of the potential for bias against him.[/li][/ol]
[ol]
[li]McDonalds files a petition for emergency injunction and it is granted in every single court that hears it. Not very damaging, but also extremely unlikely and stupid.[/li][li]Hillary could probably be arrested, but there would need to be a trial and based on the evidence thus far I doubt anything would come of it. While the executive may act on arrest powers the trial would still go through the judiciary. This hypo I think would actually be bad for the country, but only marginally so.[/li][li]I think American troops should only be used to further our interests. That being said we have several treaties that call for action in various circumstances and that would be very bad if we abrogated them.[/li][li]This can’t be done via executive order.[/li][/ol]
So 1 and 4 are nothing. 2 would be bad, and 3 would be worse. You’ve actually identified some specifics so good job on that. I think these fall more in line with presidential power but if we want to couch them in terms of EOs that works too. Do you think these are likely?
It doesn’t matter if actual grown-ups with a rational understanding of what an Executive Order is - such as ourselves - think that they’re plausible. No rational grown up would consider any of this for a minute.
I think these are Hypothetical Executive Orders that demonstrate the sort of potential damage an unprincipled idiot could wreck if he’s handed the Executive Order Pen.
No, of course it wouldn’t be legal for him to dismiss all the lawsuits via EO. But, hypothetically, if he tried it, and then ordered the DOJ to defend it? - it would cost millions and gum up the legal system for years, only to end up with him telling the Supreme Court to bite his shorts. That would be damaging on an intergalactic scale.
The question on the table was - specifically, hypothetically - what the worst that could happen if Donald Trump starts writing Executive Orders. I think I’ve identified some genuinely bad possibilities, again - working from the clear evidence that Donald Trump is, in fact, an unprincipled idiot.
You mentioned Putin, and how Trump likes him. People joke about this, but I’m wondering what Trump supporters or Repubs in general think of the speculation that Putin cronies are sinking lots of money into Trump’s candidacy and want very much for him to be elected for reasons that are a little scary when you look real close.
Do supporters know that Trump’s campaign mgr. (Manafort) has direct ties to the Panama Papers and was communications director/“rebrander” for former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych? Do they care? Do they not see how there might be reasons all these dots have come together within the Trump candidacy? I read an article yesterday (by Josh Marshall called “Trump & Putin, Yes it’s a real thing”) that bullet-pointed these connections and it sent a chill up my spine. Maybe Trump supporters don’t care about this stuff, or are totally unaware. :eek: At any rate, it’s not an affinity I think is anything to joke about.
Ok. But executive orders are a subcategory of the lawbreaking problem, the one where Trump directs others to break the law then pardons them for it. It’s not hard to imagine him doing this while skirting around the High Crime issue.
Honestly it’s difficult to predict what Trump will do. But it seems straightforward to assert that abuse of the power of pardon can’t be ruled out. Because many of the usual checks don’t apply when the President doesn’t care about downballot effects on his party and has a history of gaming rules and laws.
Here’s a link to that article you mention -
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing
It details all the points of contact between Donald Trump and his Russian counterparts. The article’s final point is that the one and only issue which Donald’s people pushed for in the GOP Platform was to reverse the previous GOP position which was in favor of arming the anti-Russian Ukrainian forces.
According to this Washington Post article, the 2016 Platform originally supported the anti-Russian side:
But Trump’s people intervened and eventually wrote an amendment to the above amendment with Trump’s prefered language.
So Trump and his team are already rewriting things to water down opposition to Putin’s Splendid Little War. I think we can expect to see more of this once he’s president.
It’s true these hypothetical EOs would be bad - but that’s not the entirety of this vein of the discussion. EOs were brought up in post #49 - but that was discussing the idea that I raised in post #28. It’s not simply the worst possible outcome that needs to be evaluated. This outcome needs to be weighed against the probability of that outcome coming to pass.