Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona.
(Image by Gage Skidmore, Author: See Source) Details Source DMCA
Just when you think President Trump couldn't invigorate outrage more than the last outrage he divined from you - likely just a millisecond ago - he prevails!
During a closed-door meeting, CNN is reporting they captured audio of Trump in conversation, opining about China's President Xi Jinping consolidation of power, forming a dictatorship and granting himself permanent power. Not shockingly, Trump was intrigued and impressed, apparently bragging it should take place in America too, you know, dictatorship.
"He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great," Trump said. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday."
What-the-freaking-what (?).
Trump's affinity for authoritarian style government isn't surprising. Every time he opens his loose mouth with praise for a leader that was either thrust on the throne by birth, violence, or corruption, I cannot help but take personal offense by his lack of gravitas for democracy.
To wit: Does Trump lack the common sense that he's president of the United States of America. Not the Philippines. Not China. Not North Korea. Not Cuba. And certainly not Russia.
For whatever morbid reason, Trump is obsessed with demented and off-putting leaders, like the likes of Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte. There's no questioning, Duterte utilizes criminal justice policy with an iron fist when dealing with the prevailing problem: drug addicts. Duterte is a firm believer in executing anyone accused of using illicit drugs. In the Philippines, there is no due process, no intervention, no rehab, just execution from accusation. One can suspect, this sounds like to heaven to Trump.
In obvious praise for Duterte's immoral and vengeance criminal policy, Trump recently remarked, "Some countries have a very, very tough penalty -- the ultimate penalty," Trump commented during a conference in the White House about the opioid crisis, per USA Today reports. "And, by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do. So we're going to have to be very strong on penalties."
Did someone forget to tell Trump that in America there's this little thing called Due Process? In fact, it's a great pillar of our democracy.
For instance, in the Manga Carter, chapter 29, on the subject of democracy, it states:
"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land."
John Adams in Instructions of the Town of Braintree to Their Representative, 1765 commenced:
"What can be wanting, after this, but a weak or wicked man for a judge, to render us the most sordid and forlorn of slaves?--we Mean the slaves of a slave of the servants of a minister of state. We cannot help asserting, therefore, that this part of the act will make an essential change in the constitution of juries, and it is directly repugnant to the Great Charter itself; for, by that charter, 'no amerciament shall be assessed, but by the oath of honest and lawful men of the vicinage;' and, 'no freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, or liberties of free customs, nor passed upon, nor condemned, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land."
And then there's Alexander Hamilton, "The words 'due process' have a precise technical import, and are only applicable to the process and proceedings of the courts of justice; they can never be referred to an act of the legislature."
Of course, only fools believe Trump has any understanding of Adams, Hamilton, the Manga Carter, the Constitution, or the ebbs and flows of what democracy means and endears: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
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