CONSTITUTIONAL OATHS AND OTHER BOTHERS
ON THE 23RD DAY since Trump’s inauguration—now becoming known as the beginning of the Coup—I received a totally unsurprising response from Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), to whom I had written about Trump’s excessive and likely illegal executive orders. Scott is nothing if not a kisser of Trump’s ring, not to mention his behind. (Should one call Scott an Uncle Tom? You’ll find a cogent Reddit discussion of that question here.) In any case, it wasn’t exactly prophetic of me to expect his lackey-ish response. Here’s a snippet from Scott’s email:
…On November 5, 2024, Americans decisively sent President Trump back to the White House. As a staunch supporter of the Constitution, our republic, and the guiding principles of democratic government passed down from our Founding Fathers, I respect and support the choice of the American people.
President Trump has already begun implementing his agenda and fulfilling promises he made on the campaign trail – in many cases through executive orders…
As we all know, Trump has unleashed Elon Musk to do the dirty work of dismantling our democracy, to hell with the Constitution. This couple—Trump and Musk—are also ignoring court orders issued to halt the illegal demolition that Musk is joyously directing.
Musk is a native South African. He’s an immigrant who came here and stayed illegally for a time before the investors of his start-up required him to get legal, giving him 45 days to establish a basis for remaining in the United States, which he did. And today he wants to deport millions of immigrants—how’s that for hypocrisy?
Since Musk is some kind of Trumpian anomaly yet is working within our government, has he taken the Constitutional Oath that all federal employees other than the President must take?
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
While we’re on this particular subject, consider again the Heritage Foundation, creators of Project 2025,in light of these words: “…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public Trust under the United States.” What is Musk’s angle with them? The Constitutional Oath and its requirement echoes our separation of church and state, a foundation of our country, but Christian nationalists are trying to change our democracy to a theocracy, while the Radical Right and Musk take down the courts and basically make Donald Trump king. And with that, any notion of a Constitutional Oath—or even our Constitution—will be dust in the wind.
“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Pledging an oath to our Constitution has been required since 1789.
WHAT ABOUT THE attorneys who are working with Trump and Musk to defy our Constitution? I say, disbar the lawyers who serve Donald Trump and are knowingly overriding the rule of law. They need to pack up their evil intentions and get out of the White House.
And to those Congresspeople and Senators who are flying in the face of their Constitutional Duty, your cowardice is breathtaking. You’re not worthy of the venerable seats you’re filling, and Americans deserve better. By going along with this Coup—making excuses and/or normalizing this seizure of legitimate process and power—you’re part of dismembering our democracy. You are doing anything but your Constitutional duty.
And to the Supreme Court: How many of you are bowing to some Christian Right abomination, whose point is to shatter our Constitution and rule of law? You put your hand on a Bible and pledged your Constitutional support, yet some of you wave your radical conservatism like a righteous flag. That casts a shadow on your duty, dishonors your name, and shames the Bible you claim to revere.
We know Justice Clarence Thomas’s conservative activist wife Ginni (with an i) had deep ties to the January 6th attempted coup that denied President Biden’s winning the 2020 election fair and square. We also know Thomas’s ethics are nothing but a soulless sieve. He has a history of accepting lavish gifts and a slew of luxury trips from Republican billionaire Harlan Crow.
Then there’s Justice Samuel Alito. His wife, Martha-Ann, flew an inverted American flag at their house, which at that time was a symbol of overturning Biden’s 2020 election win. NPR reported that this was especially important since, at that very moment, Judge Alito was sitting on two cases about January 6, one about former President Trump’s involvement in January 6. Alito refused to recuse himself from either case.
Dear Justices Thomas and Alito, you both are compromised. Yet instead of doing the honorable thing, which is resigning, you stay on to defy our Constitution and any ethics you may once have had.
Then there was the unforgettable Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. We now know that his FBI “investigation” was a total sham, undermined by the first Trump administration. Who did you believe, Brett Kavanaugh or Dr. Christine Blasey Ford?
Justice Amy Coney Barrett was a favorite among Trump’s evangelical Christian base. She is a Catholic but not just that. She’s a member of a secretive Catholic “covenant community” called People of Praise…and faces claims of adhering to a “highly authoritarian” structure.
For the previous Trump administration, he fulfilled the dreams of Christian nationalists, especially with his appointments to the Supreme Court. It is that Court that serves their actions now. In his current administration, he has picked dangerous and unacceptable buffoons for his cabinet, yet they are being confirmed.
Shame on all of you.
One of the most chilling articles I’ve read about ignoring “rogue” judges and the rule of law is in Mother Jones. It gives a sense of how deep and disturbing this is and why it appeals to Trump, which is that it would make him King:
…far-right activist Charles Haywood, a shampoo magnate who, as the Guardian has reported, runs a secretive, Christian nationalist group called the Society for American Civic Renewal. Haywood believes that an authoritarian takeover of the US government is both imminent and necessary. He has written that he aspires to serve as a “warlord” leader of armed factions who would wage “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it… Sovereign is he who decides the state of exception. And Trump had better establish, fast, that he is sovereign over the Executive Branch, rather than subordinate to puffed-up judges. Because if he is not sovereign, he is nothing.”
MEANWHILE, AT THE White House, The Donald seems to have launched a new business—The Oval Babysitting Service, specifically for Elon Musk. We’ve all had fun with the photo of Elon and his son “X” in the Oval Office with Trump. And it’s President Musk who’s in charge of the press conference, while Trump is looking off into the distance, trying to figure out what in the hell Elon is saying that he will rubber stamp, and how to get that kid out of there. Trump’s aide is like, “WTF, man.” Meanwhile, I understand that Baby Bro was picking his nose and wiping it on the president’s desk.
You can’t make this stuff up.
But while we’re laughing at the apparent absurdity of the situation, something very serious was going on. From Heather Cox Richardson: “The event was Trump signing another executive order, this one essentially putting Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in charge of the U.S. government.”
Holding forth for the cameras, Musk ironically said: “We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth. . . . The reality is they’re getting wealthy at the taxpayer’s expense. That’s the honest truth of it.”
Talk about people getting wealthy at the government’s expense! Two of Elon Musk’s companies account for at least $15.4 billion in government contracts over the past decade. He’s become the richest man in the world sucking the tit of the United States of America, which he is currently dismantling. Besides his stunning hypocrisy, what a master of disinformation he is. And the malice—I can’t get over the malice.
As any card-carrying Southern woman might ask, “What does one wear to a Coup?” Trump wears his usual red, white, and blue. Melania’s inaugural outfit was a kind of American-Handmaid’s-Tale-with-Bolero look. Elon sports his Tech Bro uniform of jeans, a T-shirt, sleek black overcoat, and a black Darth Vader Make America Great Again cap, along with black jackboots.
It’s the jackboots I can’t get out of my mind.
A Few Of My Favorite Social Media Posts And Memes Of The Week:
The body language in that presser from the Oval Office was insane. Great piece!