Conservative pundit lashes GOP for standing by while Trump makes them irrelevant with national emergency threat

According to conservative Jennifer Rubin, Republican lawmakers are allowing themselves to be turned into non-entities by President Donald Trump with his threats to go ahead and toss out budget negotiations and proclaim a national emergency to get his border wall built.

Writing in the Washington Post, Rubin called the idea that there is a true emergency impacting the country preposterous.

"There are a bunch of problems with Trump’s threat, starting with its incoherence: If he can use emergency powers, why is the government shut down?" she wrote. "Beyond that, there are constitutional limits to what Trump can do. Certainly, there are dozens of laws that give the president power to do certain things (e.g., take over media outlets, deploy troops within the United States), which in the Trump presidency — and for future presidencies that might be as unfit and authoritarian-minded as this one — Congress should review and modify or repeal."

She then stated her case and encouraged Democrats to put Trump's Homeland Security secretary under further scrutiny.

"There is no emergency and no constitutional authority for Trump to do this on his own. Nevertheless, perhaps the House should pass a resolution declaring that any such action would be unconstitutional, a gross violation of the president’s oath of office and grounds to commence impeachment," she wrote. "The House should also put Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen under oath to testify about the actual number of border crossings, the lack of evidence any terrorist has crossed the southern border, the origins of the inhumane family-separation policy and the conditions under which two migrant children have died."

"If there is an emergency, it is one caused entirely by Trump’s ignorance, hysteria and vanity," she accused.

Rubin then attacked her own party.

"That Trump would even suggest such an unconstitutional move tells us a lot about his B-team administration (more like D-team) and the state of the Republican Party," she wrote before ridiculing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

"Fast-forward to 2019, when Republicans now defend Trump or mutely stand by as he makes grand pronouncements of unlimited power. Republicans' passivity underscores their constitutional illiteracy and lack of will to carry out their own oaths of office," Rubin predicted. "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) better get back to claim his job before the president erases Article I from the Constitution."

You can read the whole piece here.