Kelly
– Smooth Like Jelly, But Weak, So Weak (When Will You Hear "You’re Fired!")
L.A. Times, 2-7-17:
President Trump's top Homeland
Security official took responsibility Tuesday for the haphazard rollout of
Trump's restrictions on entry into the U.S., a striking claim because he was
largely left out of the crafting of the order.
The confusion surrounding the
execution of the order is "all on me,” Homeland Security Secretary John F.
Kelly told the House Homeland Security Committee in his first appearance before
Congress since Trump temporarily halted refugees and barred entry for people to
the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Looking back, Kelly added, "I
should have delayed it just a bit" to inform those directly affected by
the order as well as members of Congress.
But the writing of the order and
planning for its rollout was limited chiefly to a handful of senior White House
advisors and agency lawyers, and Kelly found himself in
the awkward position of defending the execution of a directive he didn’t
see until the week it was issued and wasn’t told was coming until the day
before it was signed.
"The thinking was to get it
out quick so that people trying to come here to harm us could not take
advantage of a period of time to jump on an airplane," he said.
In case your aluminum-foil hat conspiracy-theory
knee-jerk reaction is to say, “See! That’s the kind of mainstream media fake
news, made up out of whole cloth just to undermine Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader
that Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader has warned us against,” I saw the video
on C-SPAN (though at the moment I can’t remember which Congressional committee
the Secretary was addressing) so you need to expand your conspiracy theory to
include an extremely elaborate video deception operation as well. Maybe the aluminum foil hat needs a lead
lining. Then perhaps you’d have no problem
believing the elaborate-video-deception layer of the theory. Alternatively, you could just call me a liar,
too.
Did Kelly perform this noble, though essentially
unconvincing, act of throwing himself under the bus without any White House encouragement? One would tend to doubt it, but with this
Administration who would really know?
Without trying to explain this disagreement with his
HS Secretary, though, on the 16th President Donald J. Trump declared
that “the travel ban rollout was perfectly smooth.”
Just as a reminder, ICE staffs at the ports of entry –
most significantly, at airports – had no warning or direction; they just got
the text of the Executive Order the morning it was to go into effect. At most ports of entry it was interpreted as
including lawful permanent residents (almost entirely holders of “green cards”)
returning from abroad. Probably in
response to threatened habeas corpus actions, ICE personnel urgently requested
clarification from Washington. The White
House said they read it right, continue to detain those green-card
re-entrants. Then about ten hours later the
White House said they read it wrong, there was no authority for detaining
green-card holders. Shortly after that,
the President said the Exec. Order was perfectly clear, no way could it be read
to include green-card holders, but he’d be happy to issue a clarifying
statement. Presumably, by then it was
getting back to the White House that government lawyers defending the Exec.
Order against the perfectly predictable court challenges were describing its
facial applicability to LPRs as its Achilles’ heel. The E.O. had not been vetted by the President’s
Office of Legal Counsel, either.
However, presumably because legal advisors explained
that the text of the E.O. could not be fixed, legally, by a mere clarifying
statement, no such statement was issued.
Anyway, in addition to the LPR problem, foreigners who had traveled to
the U.S. in reliance upon valid visas lawfully obtained from our State
Department were being detained and/or summarily deported, creating chaos at major
ports of entry.
But now we know that the rollout was perfectly smooth
(Because Beloved Great and Rich Leader Hath Spoken It) I suppose Sec’y Kelly’s
explanation for its non-smoothness should be overlooked in polite
embarrassment, by well-bred persons. Not
being quite so well-bred, I’ll continue to look at it and talk about it (if
only because the poor Cabinet Secretary was apparently taking his cue from
another of his chief’s Twitter® tweets).
“The thinking was to get it out quick so that people trying to come here
to harm us could not take advantage of a period of time to jump on an airplane”
makes no sense, unless these bad guys who jump on planes without visas are also
planning to slip past ICE when that plane lands in the U.S. – in which case,
the “travel ban” would make no difference, anyway. If you simply decree an immediate halt to the
issuance of visas (something the President clearly does have authority to do)
you avoid the chaos of detaining and deporting those attempting to enter on
valid visas but you would not create a
period which “people trying to come here to harm us could take advantage of … to
jump on an airplane.”
See, Secretary Kelly, you have not absorbed one of the
rules Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader has always lived by (though he has all
this time avoided consciously formulating it): Never apologize for a mistake.
Instead deny it was a mistake and question the honesty, patriotism, solvency,
appearance and/or sanity of anyone daring to suggest you made a mistake.
Kelly, you looked weak. You were supposed to say, “Rocky rollout! What rocky rollout? Why, the rollout was
perfectly smooth, perfectly smooth!
If any of the lame-stream media ‘reported’ anything suggesting
less-than-perfect smoothness, it’s just more fake news from the Very Dishonest ‘news’
organizations. Chaos? There wasn’t even
a moment of confusion, about anything whatever. It’s all lies, lies made up
just to hurt me but worse than that, made up to hurt Our Beloved Great and Rich
Leader.”
Only profoundly disturbed personalities live by such a
rule, and usually reality squashes them and they end up as homeless ranters. But sometimes they start out rich and through
luck or bluff or fraud get richer. And
sometimes …
