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'Constitutionalist' Ted Cruz mocked for dodging questions about Trump's anti-Constitution rant
December 05, 2022
After former President Donald Trump used his Truth Social platform to call for "termination" of the Constitution to correct fictitious "voter fraud" in U.S. elections and restore him to the presidency, certain high-ranking Republican officials have taken to actively condemning his statement. One notable exception: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a lawmaker who staked much of his career on reverence for the Constitution and who reportedly could recite it by heart as a teenager.
On Monday's edition of CNN's "OutFront," anchor Erin Burnett was quick to point out Cruz's cowardice, in the face of a former president who won the nomination in part by calling his wife ugly and his father a murderer.
"Better late than number," said Burnett. "The number two Republican in the Senate [John Thune] saying he couldn't, quote, 'disagree more with former President Trump, over the weekend calling for, his words, the 'termination of the U.S. Constitution' so he could be reinstalled in the White House. New Hampshire's governor, Chris Sununu, calling Trump's comment 'outrageous'. Former Vice President Mike Pence not directly criticizing Trump, instead saying 'public servants should defend the Constitution'. Interestingly, Senator Ted Cruz wouldn't answer when asked by CNN moments ago for a response to Trump's comment. Wouldn't answer at all, which is odd, because Cruz so often describes himself as a staunch defender of the Constitution as his identity."
"I've spent my life fighting to defend the Constitution," said Cruz in one clip played by CNN. "I'm a constitutionalist," he said in another.
"Does it depend how you define it?" continued Burnett. "For years, we've seen Republicans be silent or make excuses or, you know, try to run away from Trump's outrageousness because of his influence with the Republican base."
"Ted Cruz knows that that's his identity, and yet he just refused to answer the question when we asked him about what Trump said," she added.
Watch below or at this link.
Erin Burnett on Ted Cruz not reacting to Trump's demand to terminate the Constitution www.youtube.com
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'No more kings': Law professor explains how 3 judges 'utterly demolished' Trump's Mar-a-Lago defense
December 05, 2022
Former President Donald Trump found a sympathetic voice in the Mar-a-Lago/government documents case when federal Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, granted his request for a special master. But many legal experts have been highly critical of Cannon’s ruling. One of them is University of Baltimore law professor Kimberly Wehle.
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on December 5, Never Trumper Wehle applauds a three-judge panel for its rebuke of both Trump and Cannon.
“On Thursday, (December 1), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit finally put to rest the special master nonsense that Donald Trump set in motion late August, when he persuaded U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of his illegal harboring of classified and other presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida,” Wehle explains. “Special Counsel Jack Smith can now proceed apace with the investigation. What’s remarkable about the decision is not the outcome —anyone with a passing legal education could see that Cannon’s ruling was indefensible. It’s how the panel of three judges utterly demolished Trump and Cannon both, in unforgiving language inspired by foundational principles of constitutional restraint.”
READ MORE: Dare we hope: Will Special Counsel Jack Smith do what Robert Mueller would not?
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been investigating Trump in two separate cases: one having to do with government documents he was keeping at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida, the other pertaining to the events of January 6, 2021. In both cases, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to conduct the investigations.
Attorney Neal Katyal, a scathing Trump critic who served as acting U.S. solicitor general under President Barack Obama, doesn’t believe that appointing a special counsel was a wise decision on Garland’s part; Katyal believes it will slow down the investigations unnecessarily. But Garland obviously decided that bringing in someone from outside DOJ was necessary in order to counter MAGA claims that the Trump-related probes are partisan in nature. Garland has stressed that his motivation is the rule of law, not partisan politics.
“The court made a few things very clear: The FBI acted entirely by the book, which nobody disputes, including Trump,” Wehle writes. “Cannon had no constitutional — that is, ‘jurisdictional’ — authority to do what she did, unless a former president is somehow extra-special and above the laws that apply to everyone else. Cannon assumed Trump is. He’s not.”
The three-judge panel said of Trump’s defense, “All these arguments are a sideshow. The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”
READ MORE: 'Voluntary but compulsory': Why Merrick Garland hired a special counsel to handle Donald Trump
Wehle comments, “The vivid picture is not good for Trump, who is under criminal investigation for these misdeeds. And the decision effectively lets Special Counsel Smith loose on all 22,000 documents so the government can pursue the story to its logical conclusion, which could include in an indictment…. Sorry, Donald. No more kings.”
READ MORE: Appointment of highly regarded special counsel Jack Smith viewed as sign Trump is in legal jeopardy
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Evangelicals slammed for their 'empty' rejection of Trump — after they realized he's a loser
December 05, 2022
In recent weeks, key evangelical leaders who backed former President Donald Trump have begun to show signs of rejecting him, after years of staunch loyalty. But, wrote columnist Michelle Goldberg for The New York Times, there is no moral or spiritual basis for their change of heart — they have just decided he's no longer of any use to them.
"Religion News Service reported that David Lane, the leader of a group devoted to getting conservative Christian pastors into office, recently sent out an email criticizing Trump for subordinating his MAGA vision 'to personal grievances and self-importance,'" wrote Goldberg. "On Monday, Semafor quoted Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian conservative activist in Iowa, saying that evangelicals weren’t sure that Trump could win. Even Robert Jeffress, a Dallas televangelist whom Texas Monthly once described as 'Trump’s Apostle,' is holding off on endorsing him again, telling Newsweek that he doesn’t want to be part of a Republican civil war."
Russell Moore, the editor of Christianity Today and one of the few key evangelical leaders who consistently opposed Trump's candidacy from the start, takes a dim view of the shift going on in the community — noting that among evangelical voters, they are still evenly divided on Trump and leaders could run right back to the former president if their parishioners do. And there is reason to think they could.
"The last six years, said Moore, has changed the character of conservative evangelicalism, making it at once more militant and more apocalyptic — in other words, more Trump-like," wrote Goldberg. "For some people, Trump may even be the impetus for their faith: a Pew survey found that 16 percent of white Trump supporters who didn’t identify as born-again or evangelical in 2016 had adopted those designations by 2020. 'I see much more dismissal of Sermon on the Mount characteristics among some Christians than we would have seen before,' Moore said, referring to Jesus’ exhortation to turn the other cheek and love your enemies."
Instead, Moore said, these evangelicals view "kindness as weakness" — and the community could get more radicalized in certain places, because those opposed to it are splitting off into their own faction.
A recent essay by evangelical leader Mike Evans in The Washington Post has gotten heavy traction; in it, Evans remarked that “He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us.” But, wrote Goldberg, it's actually the opposite. "Contrary to Evans’s lament, no one had to close his mouth and eyes. The Republicans chose to because they wanted power, and their critique now is largely about power lost."
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