I don’t know which was worse last night: birther Donald Trump lecturing our president that he isn’t respectful enough to the Supreme Court or On The Record host Greta Van Susteren letting him do it without noting the hypocrisy.
You may recall that Trump didn’t just spend weeks on Fox News pushing a bogus “controversy” about President Obama’s birth certificate, he also questioned whether Obama was improperly accepted into Harvard and Columbia and suggested that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s book or books. Trump has also boasted about conducting an investigation in Hawaii into Obama’s birth certificate.
Not one of Trump’s accusations has been proven accurate - and he has clammed up suddenly about that Hawaiian investigation. Yet for some reason, Greta Van Susteren and other Fox News hosts persist in presenting Trump as a credible pundit or candidate – or something. Last night, Van Susteren – an attorney – pretended Trump had some chops in the dust up between President Obama and the Supreme Court.
“Do you have any thoughts about President Obama’s remarks in the last couple days about the Supreme Court and its consideration of the health care law, whether it’s constitutional or not, specifically the mandate?” Van Susteren asked Trump.
Given that Trump has absolutely no expertise in any of those matters, it’s hard to think she had any reason for asking other than to elicit another of his verbal assaults on Obama.
Sure enough, Trump responded, “I think he paid great disrespect to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court for a reason and it almost is as though he didn’t care what they said and they shouldn’t be making a decision… and they don’t exist and I would think it would be very insulting to the Supreme Court what he said… No matter how you look at it, it is very, very disrespectful to the Supreme Court.” Trump paused in his Obama bashing to throw in a little boast about himself. “These are brilliant people, I know some of them.” As if that had anything to do with the issue at hand.
Rather than note Trump’s hypocrisy in the “respect” department, Van Susteren “asked,” why Obama “started this war of words.” Funny how she never cares about Trump’s phony war on Obama.
“I really have no theory,” Trump said. “It’s almost like first grade stuff and I was absolutely shocked.” “Even intellectually, how could he make a statement so ridiculous? Some people would say, ‘not smart.’ Some people would say, ‘evil.’”
Wait a minute! The guy lecturing our president about respect just smeared him as possibly "evil!" But Van Susteren didn't find that remarkable.
Fox News rules, at least regarding Trump: Almost no smear of President Obama is out of bounds, almost any smear will be welcomed and even sought out without challenge. But the smearer’s record is off the table.
Trust me, if Joe Arpaio could have been shown the door without a political firestorm, he would have turned in his badge when I was still living there to see it in person.
There were some loons on the internet who attempted to “prove” that the document was generated on a computer, but this was totally debunked by people who understand what happens when you create a PDF document via scanning software. (Meaning that the computer program broke down the image information into several layers when scanning the hard copy)
As for this entire silliness about Obama’s comments, all he did was opine that the Supreme Court would do well to observe its own history and not just make a political ruling to help the right wing. His point was clear to anyone paying attention and not trying to make hay out of it – he was cautioning them against another Bush v Gore or Plessy v Ferguson ruling. Such a ruling would be a black eye on the honor and integrity of the court.
One can argue that Obama was a bit presumptuous to make the statement, or that he should have waited until AFTER the Court had ruled before wading into it. But there’s nothing sinister about his statement.
On the other hand, the Republican judge who threw the tantrum and demanded the Justice Department give him a 3 page memo about Obama’s statement was clearly doing so for the publicity. Obama never said that the court does not have the right to review laws or to override Congress. He talked instead about watching out for legislating from the bench and judicial activism – two frequent talking points for the right wing that they would be violating by overturning the Affordable Health Care Act. (Of course the same right wing pundits that constantly talk about judicial activism on the left are trying to say that this wouldn’t be so – since it would benefit their cause.)
http://www.tmz.com/2012/04/03/donald-trump-no-apology-transgender-miss-universe
And the story they’re talking to him about is a scandal regarding how he’s treating a transgender beauty queen.
So he has a lot of balls talking about respect, doesn’t he?
And if he had not defended Obamacare they would have labeled the Pres. a wimp.
