Trump Accused Of HYPOCRISY Over National Emergency
Trump Accused Of HYPOCRISY Over National Emergency. This morning Trump declared a National Emergency in order to secure funding for a border wall. Many critics pulled an old tweet from the president where he was critical of Obama over his declarations of national emergencies.Even before Trump made his announcement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced that she and Joaquin Castro would present a bill to block Trump's national emergency.But is it really hypocritical and will Donald Trump win the legal challenges against him?
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This morning, President Donald Trump officially declared a national emergency to get funding for the border wall.
His administration says he will have access to $8 billion to get the job done.
Almost immediately, actually a little bit before he made the announcement, Ocasio-Cortez and Joaquin Castro announced they would push a bill to block this action.
And we did see a response almost immediately from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
Now Trump himself expects legal pushback.
Everyone assumed as soon as he made this declaration, there would be a lawsuit against him.
And one statement he made during his presentation this morning may cause him some trouble.
He said, I didn't need to do this.
And immediately people said, if he didn't need to, it's not an emergency.
Now, many people have also criticized Trump for being hypocritical, for in the past criticizing Obama for using national emergencies to get what he wants pushed through as well.
I was able to speak with Will Chamberlain, who's a Trump supporter and a lawyer, about his stance on the issue.
So today, let's take a look at the latest news on the border wall, the pushback, as well as a statement from Will Chamberlain on how he feels about the issue.
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First, the news from NBC.
Trump announces national emergency to obtain billions for border wall.
The White House said Trump intends to redirect money from the military and the Treasury to fund his wall, a plan likely to meet with swift legal challenge.
The controversial executive action, which Trump acknowledged would draw lawsuits, came the day after Congress cleared a bill for his signature that prevents a second government shutdown in two months and provides just under $1.4 billion for 55 miles of new fencing along the border.
Trump has indicated he will sign the bill, which passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers, despite pressure from some conservatives to veto it because of its limitations on the type and length of barrier that can be built.
The emergency declaration could allow him to spend money on barriers from a variety of accounts, including the $1.4 billion in appropriations bill, if his actions clear legal hurdles.
Democratic leaders in Congress quickly vowed to fight Trump on what they said was an overstep of his authority.
The president's actions clearly violate the Congress's exclusive power of the purse, which our founders enshrined in the Constitution.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.
The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the courts, and in the public using every remedy available.
Senior administration officials said Friday that with the declaration, Trump will have access to a total of $8 billion for the wall.
That figure includes $1.375 billion offered by Congress in the spending bill for fencing in Texas, $600 million from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion from a Defense Department drug interdiction program, and $3.5 billion from a military construction budget under an emergency declaration by the president.
Before Trump even made his announcement, at 9.44am this story was published by Bloomberg.
Ocasio-Cortez, Joaquin Castro planned bill to block Trump's emergency declaration.
Ocasio-Cortez said she will introduce a bill with fellow Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro to stop President Donald Trump's planned emergency declaration.
Ocasio-Cortez, who was speaking on Instagram, didn't provide specifics, but Castro previously said he'd offer a joint resolution.
If President Trump declares a national emergency to fund his border wall, I'm prepared to introduce a resolution to terminate the
president's emergency declaration,"
Castro of Texas said in a statement Thursday.
The National Emergencies Act gives Congress the authority to do so by enacting a joint
resolution, according to Castro.
Almost immediately, we saw many personalities and pundits quote Trump in his Q&A session
this morning where he said, I didn't need to do this.
From Tal Kopen who tweeted, I didn't need to do this.
Trump says of an emergency declaration that his attorneys will have to defend in court was justified by an emergency.
I just want to get it done faster.
That's all.
Now what Trump actually said was, I could do the wall over a longer period of time.
I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster.
Trump's also received criticism over past statements where they say that he's being hypocritical from the Washington Post.
Subvert the Constitution, Trump's 2014 remarks on Obama's executive actions, show hypocrisy, critics say.
It was November 2014, a month that Trump spent lambasting Obama almost every day on Twitter.
Trump was an outspoken critic of Obama's immigration executive orders, which sought to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation while providing them work permits.
And on Fox News, speaking over the phone in a fast-talking, freewheeling monologue, Trump made clear what he thought of a president's authority to bypass Congress on immigration policy.
That it was illegal, and yes, impeachable.
Trump said that Obama couldn't make a deal, and so now he has to use executive action, and this is a very, very dangerous thing that should be overridden easily by the Supreme Court, he added.
We're looking now at a situation that should absolutely not pass muster in terms of constitutionality, and argued that Obama certainly could be impeached for it.
Will Chamberlain is a Trump supporter and lawyer who's been very vocal about many issues surrounding Trump.
I asked him to rebut this idea and give his thoughts on the border wall.
So the first question is whether Trump saying that he didn't really need to do the national emergency.
He just wanted to do it faster.
Will him saying that hurt him in a court challenge?
I think the answer to that question is no.
The discretion given to the president under the National Emergencies Act to declare a national emergency is extremely broad.
It's literally just up to him whether he thinks it's a national emergency.
And the only mechanism to Contravene that determination is for Congress to get two-thirds of the House and Senate to override a potential presidential veto and defeat the declaration.
There's no room for judges to come in and intervene.
There's no need for any sort of finding or any sort of standard to be met before a president declares an emergency.
So I don't think that this will ultimately hurt him in a legal challenge.
The second question is whether it's right for Trump supporters to endorse A national emergency declaration, given that it seems at first glance to be an aggressive use of an executive power.
And so the answer to that question is yes, this actually isn't really a constitutional question at all.
All President Trump is doing is invoking powers already granted to him by the legislature.
A national emergency declaring a national emergency doesn't give the president infinite power.
He couldn't just go around, for example, seizing guns or randomly imposing climate change legislation.
The president has to be able to point to specific statutes that give him power when he declares a national emergency.
And here, there are specific statutes that authorize military construction projects and moving money around to help fund and maintain civil defense projects.
And so it's really not a very aggressive use of power at all, contrary to what you're hearing in the media.
Another complaint I routinely hear is that, well, this will set a bad precedent for the use of emergency powers.
Two points here.
One, Democrats really don't seem to care about following precedent when it comes to the use of executive power on immigration.
President Obama's broad assertion of executive authority to not only defer prosecution of illegal immigrants, but also to give them work permits, they had no congressional basis either.
So In two senses, it shows why this argument is pretty facile.
One, it shows that Democrats don't care about precedent at all, so it doesn't matter what Republicans do.
And two, nobody is looking at Trump's action and saying, well, he's just following Obama's precedent of being aggressive, using his powers on illegal immigration.
So it shows that the precedent argument is really just applied to Republicans and not the reverse.
There are 31 ongoing national emergencies in the United States.
They've been completely uncontroversial.
Two weeks ago, President Trump and his team announced sanctions on Venezuela.
The authority for those sanctions came from the fact that there's a declared national emergency in Venezuela.
And not one person that I've seen on the mainstream media had commented on the fact that he was using emergency powers to do that.
Two weeks later, everybody's saying it's a ridiculous thing to use emergency powers when there isn't a direct threat to the United States' interests.
It seems preposterous, the way that the mainstream media is covering this, to make it seem like national emergencies are perfectly okay to use when intervening in foreign countries' conflicts, but not at all okay to use for a genuine humanitarian emergency on the border.
One last note specifically on the wall is something interesting pointed out this morning from White House reporter Gabby Orr.
This is new.
Trump says he plans to use a second national emergency first declared by Obama.
We may be using one of the national emergencies that he signed having to do with criminal cartels.
It's a very good national emergency.
We're going to be using parts of it.
Many people were concerned we would see a second government shutdown because negotiations had stalled and Trump wasn't going to get what he wants.
Although the national emergency was a course of action he was expected to take, it looks like that's what he's going to do.
There were several Republicans as well as angel moms who were encouraging Trump to veto this bill.
But we're gonna see a legal challenge, so I guess we'll just see how this pans out.
But one more interesting side note having to do with the potential for a shutdown.
It's not just Trump who's threatening not to fund the government, but the progressive freshman congresswomen as well, from Broadly.
Progressive freshman lawmakers to vote no on spending bill that would fund ICE.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib will vote against a bipartisan bill because it increases funding to the Department of Homeland Security.
Ocasio-Cortez's and her fellow freshmen's colleagues' willingness to take a stand against ICE has left many feeling that it's possible to advance policy in Congress to eliminate the agency.
AOC has proven again to be a true leader on Abolish ICE, and I have no doubt she will be unwavering.
Data for Progress co-founder Sean McElwee, often credited with leading early calls on the left to abolish ICE, told Broadly last month.
After the New York congresswoman sold no vote, I am confident that we will see legislation to abolish ICE in the 116th Congress.
The government funding bill had broad bipartisan support.
Most Republicans and Democrats are in favor of it.
Even Trump was willing to sign it, though he is going to use a national emergency to get around the fact they're not giving him what he wants.
But Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive members of the Democrats are taking a firm stand against funding the government if it means ICE will get money.
So, personally, I think as we move forward, the turmoil we see in the government, potential for government shutdowns, it's not just going to be Trump or select Republicans, but the far-left Democrats as well.
We all kind of expected that a national emergency would happen, and now we're looking at it.
Whether or not Trump will get past the legal hurdles, we'll see, but let me know what you think in the comments below.
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