Thread: Lawyers Can’t Save America From Trump

Lawyers Can’t Save America From Trump

By PAUL BUTLER
JUNE 20, 2017

Lawyers, rather than elected leaders or activists, are playing the most visible role in responding to emergencies created by the Trump administration. I have a great deal of respect for attorneys — as a law professor, I make my living by training them — but they are not the best first responders to the Trump presidency.

In a time when Donald Trump’s platform — building the wall, banning the Muslims, making America great “again” — poses central questions about our national identity, everybody has an opinion about rules. Even ordinary citizens are using legal discourse, rather than discussions of values or policy, to assess the dire state of affairs. Americans are asking questions like, is collusion a crime? Can a sitting president be criminally indicted or would he have to be impeached first?

One poll reports that 49 percent of voters think the president is guilty of obstruction of justice. Cable television features debates about whether President Trump’s tweets should be admitted as evidence in federal court. Senate committees convene to consider whether Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign conspired with Russians to subvert United States democracy but the senators’ questions focus on whether any of the president’s men attempted to impede the investigation (at this point no women have emerged as subjects of the investigation).

The resort to law in a time of crisis is not new. Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in 1835, observed “there is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question.” But the prominence of legal discourse waxes and wanes depending on whether we trust the political process, and our elected officials.

Whether they loved or hated Barack Obama, hardly anyone thought he was corrupt. But when we don’t have that confidence about our elected leaders, we revert to legal concepts and principles — and of course lawyers — to frame discussion of public issues. During such times, Americans may feel an especially urgent need to invoke law as a constraint on power.

Enter Donald Trump. His 2016 presidential campaign is being investigated to determine if staffers colluded with Russians, and the president is reportedly under investigation in connection with his firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. director who was leading the collusion probe. Now many people associated with either the campaign or the Trump White House are lawyering up. Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, has even hired his own lawyer.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election, may be the most powerful person in the country right now. But whether obstruction of justice counts as a high crime or misdemeanor is not the most important question posed by Mr. Trump’s presidency. We should not have a crook for president, and we absolutely need an investigation to determine whether we do. Still we’re not all good if the special counsel determines that Mr. Trump did not commit an impeachable offense.

Regardless of what happens with Mr. Mueller’s investigation, we should be worried about what President Trump’s rise to power says about our values, public policy and culture. Does the alt-right movement present a significant threat, or is it a fringe group that’s best to ignore? Why did 52 percent of white women vote for a man who repeatedly made sexist comments, and against a better-qualified female candidate? What will be the consequences of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s plan to ratchet down federal oversight of police departments and ratchet up the war on drugs? Is Mr. Trump’s “America First” isolationism in our nation’s best interests? Do the president’s consistent attacks on the media jeopardize a free press? Why don’t Mr. Trump’s lies seem to bother his supporters? These are conversations in which ordinary citizens — teachers and artists and faith leaders — should have as much to say as lawyers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/o...f-justice.html

LOL!! Oh my God, the LEFT is truly falling apart, fizzling as fast as their dream case to impeach Donald Trump. Can lawyers save America? How can collectively the group of people who have most contributed to our demise possibly save America? Donald J Trump is saving America, not lawyers. Donald J Trump is resetting our Train on its rails, fixing its engine, re-attaching its cars, and providing the fuel to make it ROLL again. The Trump Train is Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' to Make America Great Again!!

Lawyers are busy looking for crimes that don't exist, leaking distorted if not bald-faced lies to the media, jeopardizing our foreign policy, upsetting our citizens and dividing our nation. Yes, there are a handful out there who are hired to defend the President, the Presidency, the White House, the White House Staff and yes, even a group to defend Donald J Trump from the Witch Hunt.

Lawyers aren't securing our borders, deporting illegal aliens, keeping US safe from terrorists, promoting peace, rebuilding our infrastructure, bringing our good jobs back to the US, putting money in the wallets of Americans, increasing job hires, increasing wages, increasing the GDP, or doing anything else that will matter tomorrow when the new sound bytes hit the news. Yesterday's news is like a yesterday's ice cube in Florida. Here today, gone tomorrow.

What matters to saving America is what President Trump is doing, and from the looks of it, he and his staff and Cabinet departments are about the only ones doing anything to even try to save our country from poverty, overpopulation, deficits and debt by putting Americans back to work at jobs that sustain them. Obviously he can't fix what took decades to accomplish, but there is no one in this nation or any other that can or will do it any faster or better than this President.

There are 330 million people in the United States, approximately 3 million of them are Muslims. They are a very small minority religious group, some American, some foreign-originated. Whatever they are, whether our own home-grown Muslims or Muslims who have come here for some reason or another, it's time our Courts, our Congress, and our MEDIA end the focus on them, and turn the page to reporting real news of interest and benefit to all Americans without religious bias, connotation, identity, magnification or exaggeration.

Most Americans could care less what your religion is, unless of course it was the reason for 9/11 and other horrible terrorist attacks. Until 9/11, you could probably count the Americans who cared about the Muslim religion one way or another on 1 hand. It's time we get back to that. Trump will do everything possible to keep bad people out of our country including bad people of the Muslim religion, because he views radical Islamic terrorism as a scourge.

In the meantime, there may be Americans who when they see someone wearing their Muslimism on their sleeve won't want to sit next to them on the subway for fear they're a terrorist. Well, they may be a terrorist, they may be wearing a bomb to blow up the train, so don't blame the American.

Americans didn't start this, Muslims did. So, it is your job to fix it, not ours. Our job is to defend ourselves from radical Islamic terrorism until you do.

As to comparing Obama to Trump or vice versa, you might as well try to compare any lawyer-activist-professor-politician selling out our country through will or ignorance to any Lion King determined to feed and protect his pride to ensure its survival and help it thrive again.

When we become a nation of citizens rejecting leaders trying to fix and save our country, then we've already lost it. I don't think we're there, I think the election of 2016 proved without any doubt whatsoever that Americans are here, we're alive and well, and so far in strong enough numbers to fix this country and Make It Great Again. And THAT is the Wild Card the CORRUPT MEDIA and DEMOQUACKS have either forgotten about or are too scared and weak to face.

This President may not do everything each individual American wants him to do. There is probably no stronger Trump Supporter out there than me. Yet, President Trump has some policies I don't agree with and has done some things I would have either not done or done differently. For example, I'm Pro-Choice, he's Pro-Life. I support funding for Planned Parenthood and oppose the Mexico City Policy. He retracted the Cuba policy, where I would have expanded it. I questioned the bombing of the Syrian Air Base over the claims of gas attacks, because I wasn't and am still not convinced the Syrian government did this. These are just differences that will work themselves out over time. Few Americans agree on everything, because we're each unique, which makes our country exceptional, so differences like these will not deter me nor other Trump Supporters with their own set of differences from continuing their support for this President.

Lawyer-professor-writers like Paul Butler have buried themselves in their own weeds, deafened by their own noise, and soon to be silenced by their own irrelevancy.

So all the silly useless pundits trying to over-turn the 2016 US election by tearing down this Presidency with false allegations, secret innuendo and fake news, need to keep that in mind, because it will not happen.

How do I know that? Because this President knows how to Tweet, and he's killing you with them.