Legal Weasel in Chief: Donald Trump

Legal Weasel in Chief: Donald Trump

It took Trump two weeks, and many prodding calls to the Saudi King and Prince, but Trump has again constructed a weasel out of losing any money from the Saudis.

Of course, I am referring to the brutal and abhorrent murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Istanbul Consulate of Saudi Arabia.

So when Khashoggi goes into the consulate, which is Saudi territory, he is held without his will or kidnapped, for hours, until 15 Saudi thugs arrive.  One rogue among them, supposedly, overwhelms the other 14 highly dangerous Saudi enforcers, and kills Khashoggi.  Instead of reporting this to the police, the rogue agent forces the consulate staff to be silent for weeks, and lie that Khashoggi left the consulate.  He then forces the other 14 thugs to fly all of them back to Riyadh, where he knows he will stand trial and be beheaded for his crimes.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  This only makes sense in Trump’s head, full of the other 6,000 lies which he has told since he has been in office.

You knew from Trump’s first comment, that Khashoggi was not a citizen, and only a green card holder, and not in the country, and balanced by an imaginary $110 billion mound of Saudi cash, that the scales of justice were taking a nose dive to weaseldom. 

First of all, the Saudis are experts at indenturing Trump by emoluments with events at Trump’s D.C. tower.  They also bailed out Trump’s 5th Avenue Tower, with high priced sales and rentals, which Trump even bragged about in a campaign speech, on tape, citing how he loved the Saudis because of the high prices they were paying.  Were Presidential emoluments a crime, we have the taped confession.

Trump is implying that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection under the law only applies to US citizens.  It doesn’t have that restriction, it applies to all who are in the US:  “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  Mr. Khashoggi has a green card, and has worked in the US starting in 2005 when he was an aide to the Saudi ambassador.  Jamal’s father was court physician to King Abdulaziz.  Another Khashoggi, Adnan, a billionaire arms dealer, sold his yacht to Trump in the 80’s.  The family comes from Turkey.  Recently, Jamal was a reporter for the Washington Post, and a media personality.

While the US now has a population of 329 million, about 22.1 million are not US citizens.  That is 6.7%.  Trump seems to be implying that green card holders, permanent residents, foreign students, tourists, and even the undocumented, are not protected by US laws and the Constitution.  They are.

This promise of looking into the crime and severe punishment is another Trump nothingburger.  How is his ban on bump stocks doing?  How about the fair investigation of Prof. Fords charges of Kavanaugh, which was very restricted in time and number of witnesses, and whose FBI report only had one copy, and the public will never know about?

Update:  if you think that I was stretching it in comparing the Kavanaugh case to this one, the President just said that they are similar.  I don’t think Kavanaugh appreciates that.

Trump has to believe what any world dictator tells him, that is that they cannot lie, so he can convince us that he is not a profound liar.

Trump has never met a dictator who he has not liked or now loved, and wished that he could have the same suppression of press criticism and lifetime appointment.  This is just more of the same. 

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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