What a Week
Just like last week and the week before that and the week before that
This week was light on daily White House Briefings but it certainly wasn’t light on super scary and baffling news. Here is just a short list of what went on this week:
- Jared Kushner went to Iraq for…some reason.
- Assad attacked civilians with Sarin gas.
- The US bombs airfield in Syria in retaliation for Sarin gas attack.
- Judge Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court.
- The GOP blew up the Senate Filibuster to force Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation.
- Trump met with the Egyptian “president” — and praised him!
- Trump held a joint press conference with the King of Jordan.
- Trump hosted the President of China at Mar-a-Lago (as far as I know Xi Jinping was not forced to play golf).
- Devin Nunes steps down as the chair of the House Russia Investigation.
- Trump lied about Susan Rice committing a crime (she didn’t).
- Twitter filed a lawsuit against the Trump admin to protect a user’s identity (the user’s crime? Being mean to the administration).
- There was massive flooding in Colombia.
- There was a terrorist attack in Sweden.
And, of course, the Russia stuff is still going on and more details are dropped every day.
It’s a lot.
Today, though, I want to talk more about what I focused on in Wednesday’s post. In that post, I focused on Trump’s keeping his military decisions/strategy secret from the American people.
That’s scary enough for so many reasons.
What’s even scarier (and it’s embarrassing that it took me this long to clue into this)? If last night’s missile strike is any indication, Trump’s insistence that “I’m a big boy and I can keep secrets if I wanna”-ness is carrying over to Congress. And his Cabinet.
That is Bug Nuts Bonkersville.
There’s some debate over whether last night’s missile strike was illegal. Unfortunately, right now we just don’t know. Here’s why:
If the President wants to officially declare war or commit our military to extended action, he must ask Congress’s permission. If he just wants to do a one-off thing, though, the AUMF gives the President the power to conduct a one-off action on his own.
The AUMF is the Authorization for Use of Military Force, but you probably remember it as “that super scary law that lets the President do military stuff without adult supervision because 9/11.”
So, right now? The Missile strike is legal. If he decides to do more of them? Or if he wants to put boots on the ground or planes in the sky? He’ll have to plead his case before Congress. That should go over well with the man who insists that he is the supreme high commander of the world forever and ever amen. At that time, if he tries to declare war or commit troops without consulting anybody? He’ll be in big trouble. Y’Know, if the GOP has finished using him as a yes-man for all the terrible stuff they want to do.
Of course, something being legal doesn’t necessarily mean that it is good. I’m horrified that we bombed Syria last night. I’m even more horrified that we didn’t hit anything that matters. This morning, Assad resumed his air strikes, with planes flying out of the same base that had been hit. It looks like last night’s bombing was probably mostly because Trump thinks that blowing stuff up makes him look strong. And maybe because some people in the Pentagon told him he’d get his very own race car bed if he did what they said.
This is worrying for a lot of reasons but it did achieve one good (petty, but good) goal: it pissed of Steve Bannon something fierce.
In case anybody was wondering? Steve Bannon rage-tears taste like waffles.
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