Tag: census citizenship question

Trump says he’s ‘so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius’ in tweet bashing 2020 Dems

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President Donald Trump again referred to himself as a “stable genius” while also touting himself as “great looking” in a tweet Thursday mocking some of the leading Democratic candidates hoping to unseat him. 

In the middle of a morning tweet storm that touched on everything from the census to the Pledge of Allegiance, Trump said that all news media outlets would all be endorsing him “at some point, one way or the other.” He made that prediction based on his belief that they will “quickly go out of business for lack of credibility, or approval, from the public” when “I ultimately leave office in six years or maybe 10 or 14 (just kidding).” 

He then used his favorite insults for former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wondering how anyone could imagine one of them being president instead of “what you have now, so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!” 

Trump has referred to himself as a “stable genius” on several occasions. He first used the term in January 2018 in response to concerns that he was not mentally fit for office, which were magnified after the publication of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” The book featured quotes from administration officials who questioned Trump’s cognitive ability, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon who said Trump “has lost it.” 

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” Trump tweeted. He added that being elected president “on my first try” should “qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” 

The president used the phrase again in May after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she hoped “for an intervention” for Trump and expressed concern about his well-being after he abruptly left a meeting with Democrats. Pelosi said Trump had “flipped” but Trump said he had been “extremely calm” and called himself an “extremely stable genius.” 


[USA Today]

Trump says he’s considering executive order to force census question

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Donald Trump told reporters he is “thinking of” issuing an executive order to force including a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census, according to the White House pool.

Four days ago, the department that oversees the Census, the Commerce department, said it was printing Census forms without the question.

Chaos ensued.

The president said reports that this was happening were fake – even though the Commerce secretary said it was happening – and then a Justice department lawyer had to defend the president’s comment without anyone in the department apparently being briefed on it.

The judge presiding over the case of whether its legal to include a citizenship question in the Census is not happy about how things are playing out.

On Wednesday, just before the Fourth of July holiday, federal district court judge George Hazel convened a call with the attorneys and said:

If you were Facebook and an attorney for Facebook told me one thing, and then I read a press release from Mark Zuckerberg telling me something else, I would be demanding that Mark Zuckerberg appear in court with you the next time, because I would be saying I don’t think you speak for your client anymore.

[The Guardian]

Reality

This would be a constitutional crisis in two ways, first going around the courts, and second the power of the census is given to Congress in Article I while the presidential powers are spelled out in Article II. Trump has no constitutional authority over the census.