Along Comes Axios With More Spoiled Red Meat for Trump's Base

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

30 October 18

It's about the midterms, but it's also about planting this perilous nonsense more firmly into the public mind and the public debate.

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"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Trump said, declaring he can do it by executive order. When told that's very much in dispute, Trump replied: "You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order." "We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits," Trump continued. "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end." (More than 30 countries, most in the Western Hemisphere, provide birthright citizenship.) (Ed. Note: Strong pushback, Axios!) "It's in the process. It'll happen ... with an executive order."

Before we dignify this crapola by pretending it is a serious argument, let's remember that Axios is the latest brainchild of the two Presiding Geniuses that gave us Politico back in the fullness of the Tiger Beat On The Potomac days. (At the moment, while there are still existential problems with much of its approach to politics, Politico, especially in its magazine manifestation, is a much better product.) Hence, we have two reporters, including one of the PG's, sitting there like well-nurtured geraniums while the president* announces that he can strike out the 14th Amendment with the stroke of his crayon. In many ways, it's a desperate election-year stunt, yet more spoiled red meat for the scaredy-cat base, the same way sending a brigade of armed soldiers to the Texas wasteland to look at sand is a stunt. But it's stunting on the square. He means it, and so do the members of the dangerous claque he's embedded in the Executive branch. It's about the midterms, but it's also about planting this perilous nonsense more firmly into the public mind and the public debate. And along comes Axios to help him with the planting because, hey, they have a new TV show.

(And dear Stephanie Ruhle: "The Founders" had nothing to do with the 14th Amendment, which was one of three amendments added after the Civil War had settled the moral malignancy that The Founders had left untreated in the original Constitution.)

As to the actual issue, such as it is, the Supreme Court appeared to settle this question in 1898, in a decision called U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. It doesn't matter a damn what "They" may have told him, he can't end the birthright citizenship bestowed by the 14th Amendment without a constitutional amendment. If he wants to try that way, he's welcome to try, but he doesn't know enough about anything to make the effort, and he's too lazy to try it anyway.

If he signs that executive order, that's an unconstitutional act. It's arguably an impeachable offense. It's certainly a violation of his oath of office. And, now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure the current SCOTUS would stand up to him, either. After all, one of the primary legal arguments against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh was his belief in virtually unlimited executive power. No Morning is not worth winning at this cost.