Revenge Is A Dish Served ... Orange

[cahwyguy]

Recently, there’s been a meme going around that states that Trump is going after Harvard because they rejected Barron, but accepted the Obamas. Now, that meme is pure supposition; Snopes rates it as unverified. To me, the reason that meme is going around is not its accuracy; it is because to the liberal community, it is plausible. That’s the real problem: We’ve come to believe that the President using the power of his office to take personal revenge on those who he believes has harmed him in any way is normal.

It is not.

The job of the President is to ensure that laws passed by Congress are enforced. He doesn’t get to create new laws; he doesn’t get to selectively enforce laws on those he doesn’t like. The President doesn’t get to take punitive action because someone told him “no”. The President doesn’t get to withhold legally authorized funding because a private organization exercised the right of free speech (or allowed a private individual, attending that private organization, to exercise the right of free speech).

It is clear that the President is selectively targeting Harvard. He doesn’t seem to be going after any other university with equal vengeance, so the impression being given is that this is some form of revenge. We don’t know the specifics, but revenge does seem the most logical explanation. After all, his excuse of antisemitism isn’t strongly borne out, nor would it engender this specific response (it hasn’t for other universities where similar speech has occurred). His excuse of wanting immigration records is also not borne out; HHS and ICE should already know the students on Student Visas that are attending Harvard. No, this is clearly punitive. This is a personal grudge.

We elect the President to work in the best interest of the nation, not himself or his family. We’ve already seen numerous examples of where this President is working to benefit his family or pocketbook.  We also expect the President to have a sufficiently thick skin that he can set aside the personal grudges while in office. After all, we didn’t elect a King (or Queen) that can yell “Off with their head” at the slightest provocation.

Harvard has done nothing to justify the response it is getting from this administration. We need to somehow get our congresscritters and the courts to stop this policies of revenge. I may not agree with what the Harvard students have said to provoke the President, but they do have the right to say it.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along the Road as Revenge Is A Dish Served ... Orange by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link to the left. You can sign in with your LJ, DW, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. Note: Subsequent changes made to the post on the blog are not propagated by the SNAP Crossposter; please visit the original post to see the latest version. P.S.: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>We’ve come to believe that the President using the power of his office to take personal revenge on those who he believes has harmed him in any way is normal.<<

It's not what a President is supposed to do. But it is very predictably what this one does, and American voters elected him knowing that he has this habit. It's pretty common for powerful men in general.

>>We elect the President to work in the best interest of the nation, not himself or his family. <<

If that was what people wanted, they would've voted for someone else. Instead they voted for this jackass and his chicanery. The second time, it's not a mistake, it's a choice.

>>I may not agree with what the Harvard students have said to provoke the President, but they do have the right to say it.<<

Hell, I'm in favor of anyone swinging at that pinata. Somebody has to do it, and obviously the laggards in Washington aren't going to pick up the stick. Which is exactly why he feels free to do whatever he wants: nobody's stopping him.