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What Trump's latest Twitter tirade tells us
North America reporter
6 hours ago US & Canada <
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The London Bridge attacks set Donald Trump off on an extended Twitter rant over the
past few days, reviving his calls for sweeping immigration action and renewing old feuds
with Democrats, gun-control advocates and even the mayor of London.
While White House advisor Kellyanne Conway recently complained that the media have an
“obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as
president", Mr Trump is the pot-stirrer-in-chief, who has the power to drive debate and shape
events.
Words, whether spoken or tweeted, have consequences. The president's Monday morning
fusillade about his immigration policy is no exception. Here are five things we learned.
A ban is a ban is a ban
The lynchpin of the White House's defence of Mr Trump's two controversial immigration
‘executive orders that set restrictions on immigration from a handful of majority-Muslim nations
was that they had no connection to the anti-Muslim travel ban candidate Trump proposed back
in December 2016.‘The executive actions, they argued, constituted temporary restrictions and not a "ban", Muslim
or otherwise.
The president has occasionally undercut that defence, by using the b-word in the past - leaving
his aides to clean up the mess.
's not a Muslim ban, It's not a travel ban," Press Secretary Sean Spicer said back in January.
"I's a vetting system to keep America safe.”
(On Monday morning, however, Mr Trump applied kerosene to that defence, set it ablaze and
danced around its ashes.
"but lam
"People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want,” he tweeted,
calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN."
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Trump targets the courts (again)
Speaking of the judicial branch, the president on Monday morning went on the attack against the
US legal system, calling the courts "slow and political’.
The line is reminiscent of one of the president's more inflammatory tweets, when he lashed out
against the federal judge who struck down his original immigration order.
"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our
country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” he tweeted on 4 February.
The following day he issued an even more ominous warning, tweeting that the judge put the
nation in peril and "if something bad happens blame him and the court system".
According to one theory, advanced by Lawfare blog's Jack Goldsmith, Mr Trump's seemingly ill
considered comments are all part of a plan to get the courts to strike down his immigration
orders, freeing him to blame the judiciary for any subsequent attacks
Itmay, however, be just another case of "what you see is what you get" with Mr Trump. He has
feuded with judges throughout his professional life, including criticising the Mexican heritage ofthe man who was presiding over a lawsuit against his for-profit “university” during last year's
presidential campaign.
President Trump is the same as candidate Trump is the same as businessman/TV star Trump.
The stage may be different, but the man doesn't change.
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Trump turns on his own
One of the more unusual components of Mr Trump's Monday morning diatribe was that he
turned his Twitter invective on his own administration
He lashed out at the Justice Department, headed by his close political confidant Jeff Sessions,
for focusing its legal defence on what he called the "watered down, politically correct" second
executive order on immigration and not the more sweeping first version that explicitly mentioned
religion and caused confusion when it was first enforced at airport immigration checkpoints.
Justice Department lawyers have tried to decouple the second order from the original, arguing
that it remedied the discriminatory portions of the earlier effort, clarified that those with legal
residency were unaffected and focused exclusively on nations that had previously been
determined to be of concern to US.
When the president signed that second order in early March, Spicer tweeted that it would "keep
the nation safe".
"This revised order will bolster the security of the United States and our allies" Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson said.
Now the president is bad-mouthing the very same action his aides had resolutely defended. He
is clearly irked that his administration abandoned that first travel order, particularly after he told
its critics that he would see them “in court".
If Mr Trump continues to casually undercut his own people, however, they'll be less willing to
rush to his defence in the coming days - when the president may need them most.
Last week, for instance, multiple officials doggedly refused to say whether the president believes
climate change is caused by human activity - a position most conservative officeholders,including the president's own Environmental Protection Agency head, accept. Such reluctance
may be just a taste of things to come.
Why go out on a limb for a president who is standing by the tree with a saw in hand?
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Extreme vetting is back
‘The president also dusted off one of his favourite terms from the 2016 campaign - “extreme
vetting’ - which he said is helping "keep our country safe".
The original justification for the travel ban orders was that they were a temporary measure to
allow a rigorous review process to be instituted for all individuals entering the US. The first
action's time frame for implementation was 90 days - which would have set the mark at 27 April
‘The second order, signed on 6 March, reset the 90-day clock again - a point that was reached
‘on Sunday.
The Weekly Standard’s Michael Warren reached out to the Trump White House for further
clarification on what vetting measures had been put in place and was directed to the State
Department, which has yet to give respond.
Before Monday morning the last time the president himself had mentioned “extreme vetting" was
in mid-February, when he said it “will be put in place, and it already is in place in many places".
Now extreme vetting - as a term at least - is back. But what is it? And if it's already in place,
doesn't that erase the justification for implementing the travel ban?
It might - unless, of course, the ban was never intended to be temporary. That's a question the
"slow and political” courts are likely to consider,GETTY IMAGES
Trump is comered
The president's social media onslaught comes after the latest round of stories about how the
president was going to be more disciplined and focused, and less prone to Twitter trades, Mr
Trump's lawyers, we were told, were counselling him to tamp things down, lest his comments
land him in more hot water.
The president has apparently disregarded this advice yet again and is trying his best to fight old
battles and rekindle old feuds.
Why? Perhaps it's because there is a very dark storm cloud on the horizon. On Thursday
former FBI Director James Comey - the man Mr Trump dramatically fired and has since very
publicly insulted - will testify under oath before a Senate inquiry into Russia's meddling in the US.
presidential election. He's expected to discuss reports that the president asked him to pledge his
loyalty and pressured him to back off from his investigation of Trump foreign policy advisor
Michael Flynn.
Given Mr Comey's reputation for political independence and morale certitude - combined with the
possibilty that he has contemporaneous memos documenting his interactions with the president
- the testimony could be disastrous for the White House.
Atthe very least, it will be a spectacle the likes of which Washington has not seen in decades.
The president could be eager to change the subject or, at the very least, deflect some attention.
If'so, the past few days of Twitter invective could be just the start.
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