Trump gets what he wanted in Mexico

Donald Trump could barely have scripted it better. After a year of tormenting Mexico as a hostile foe, he stepped to a podium on Mexican soil — alongside the country’s leader Enrique Peña Nieto — and got a president’s welcome.

Trump emerged from an hourlong huddle with Peña Nieto and the pair delivered side-by-side statements, embedding subtle criticisms of each other inside enthusiastic declarations of mutual respect. But it was the precise visual Trump had hoped for: a bilateral news conference that amounted to a preview of what similar international trips might look like in a Trump presidency.

.. Peña Nieto even contended that Trump’s hot-blooded rhetoric about Mexicans has been, in some cases, “misinterpretations.”

.. He delivered a methodical dismantling of Trump’s anti-NAFTA arguments, noting that trade with Mexico supports as many as 6 million American jobs. He also reminded Trump that for all the undocumented immigrants and drugs flowing north, illegal cash and weapons are flowing south.

.. “Every year millions of weapons and millions of dollars cross illegally into Mexico from the North that strengthen cartels and other criminal organizations that generate violence in Mexico and receives earnings from drug sales in the United States. This flow has to be stopped.”

.. Later, Peña Nieto lamented that there’s been “misinterpretations and statements that have unfortunately hurt and affected Mexicans in the way he’s presented his candidacy,” but he added that “I was sure that his genuine interest was to build a relationship.”

.. Trump, who delivered his statement second

.. Vicente Fox said the visit simply legitimized Trump’s earlier harsh rhetoric. After the speech, Felipe Calderon called Trump a “hypocrite” for changing his tone.

“I don’t believe him. He is lying. He doesn’t mean what he says,” Calderon said on CNN. “He says we’re rapists and tomorrow he says we’re wonderful, smart, hardworking people. He is lying. And for that reason, I think, I was very, very sorry, I’m very sorry he came to Mexico. I think it was a very important mistake.”

 

On Donald Trump and the rule of law

So what happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe Mexican, which is great. I think that is fine. You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs. I think they are going to love it. I think they are going to love me. . . .

.. No, this is called “authoritarianism.” It’s what Berlusconi sounded like, what Chávez sounded like and what Perón sounded like — for that matter, it’s what Sulla and Caesar and the others who helped destroy the world’s first great republic sounded like: I am bigger than the law, I AM THE LAW.

.. from a man being seriously considered to head one of the three branches of our government, it is a not-too-thinly-veiled attack on the notion of judicial independence and the rule of law. If the guy in charge of executing the laws thinks the system is “rigged” — against billionaires, I suppose he means — and a “total disgrace,” then . . . well, you can figure it out. Enforce the law against himself? Or against his pals? That’s for suckers.

.. if you are elected president and come back for your civil trial in November — it will be a disgraceful spectacle. Great for ratings, though — and that’s all that matters, right?

.. Our republic has survived some terrible presidents, with terrible ideas about how to run the country; but this is something different. We’ve never had a president who not only thinks the government will be a toy for him to play with and push people around — wow!! how wild is that!! — but who tells us, in advance, over and over again, that that is his game. If we vote him into office, I suppose we will deserve what comes.

.. Our form of government will not work if the executive branch does not respect the legitimacy of decisions made by the judicial branch, because our judicial branch is entirely without power to enforce its judgments without the assistance of the executive branch.  

.. While I don’t want to be accused of over-dramatization, it is not inappropriate to point out, on this day after Memorial Day, that many people actually gave their lives to defend this idea, and we dishonor them if we throw it away.

.. And it’s not like he is standing on some important point of constitutional principle; he’s speaking out of naked self-interest, complaining about a case in which he stands to lose many millions of dollars if the judgment goes against him.

.. It is far, far too easy to imagine President Trump on prime time TV tearing up any judgment against him with a big smile on his face: “Hey, Judge Curiel, you think I have to fork $22 million to defrauded customers?  Try and make me …”   After all, the system is rigged – and the judge, to make matters worse, is a Mexican**. President Trump is going to be pushing them around, remember? Not vice versa!

.. That a TV celebrity wants to be above the law and immune to its commands is no surprise; I suspect that lots of TV celebrities would like to act outside the law.But the president actually has the levers of the law in his/her hands.  And there is a name for a chief executive who believes he/she is above the law: tyrant.

Trump’s Border Wall Plan Is Ridiculous on Its Face

Then, he vows to get Mexico to foot the bill, as if there were honor in extorting a poor but reasonably amicable neighbor into paying the vital border-security costs of a profligate superpower in whose budget $10 billion barely qualifies as a rounding error. (Compare, e.g., Trump’s promise to do nothing about unsustainable entitlements that are bankrupting the economy.)

.. Yet, absent from most of his speeches to the ardent faithful — and from his campaign’s position paper, with which he seems unacquainted — is the vow he reserves for more progressive audiences and media interviews: He will readmit most of the 11 million illegal aliens (as he puts it, “the good ones”) with legal status after he wastes considerably more than $10 billion to chase down and deport them.

.. Section 326 of the Patriot Act — which expressly targets “international money laundering” and “terrorist financing” — empowers the Treasury Secretary to prescribe rules that financial institutions must follow in identifying people who open accounts and use them to move money. Trump figures all he needs to do is rewrite the relevant regulation.

.. Brazenly, Trump’s memo crows that he does not intend his proposed regulation to be like, you know, a real regulation. It is instead meant to be a scare tactic: hardball to pressure Mexico into coughing up cash for the Great Wall of Trump.