Government

On UN Day, Trump Lawyers Offer New S-Hole Countries Explanation

We're now at the 'presumption of regularity' stage.

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(image via iStock)

Today, Donald Trump is blathering about the United Nations, once again embarrassing America on the world stage as we all look to see Stephen Miller’s hand thrust up Donald Trump’s back as he gives voice to Miller’s thoughts.

As always with Trump, processing the current lies and bigotry tends to drown out the past incidents of international embarrassment. This week, the world is busy wrestling with the likelihood that Trump threatened military and financial aide to the Ukraine unless they dug up dirt on his political opponents.

But the Trump administration itself has also chosen this week to remind people that Trump is a bad actor on the international stage even when he’s not committing directly impeachable offenses.

The Trump administration lost its case to revoke Temporary Protected Status to Haitian refugees. In any sane world, a reasonable administration would have taken the “L” and moved on, because the Haitian TPS case involves one of the most egregious examples of Trump’s racism on the public record. Remember, it was Haitians that Trump said came from a “shithole” country where everybody has AIDS.

Since this is an unreasonable administration and we live in an insane world, Trump appealed the ruling.

That requires to Department of Justice to file a brief on the administration’s behalf. And that leads us to today’s re-telling of the shithole countries story, from the administration’s perspective. This is from their brief:

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Ladies and gentlemen, your Department of Justice.

There are many things wrong with the above paragraph. Allow me to list them, in no particular order:

  • There is nothing “objective” about calling other countries shitholes.
  • Calling other countries shitholes does not advance the interests of American citizens.
  • Many American citizens (full disclosure: INCLUDING ME) trace their roots back to Haiti. Bigoted immigration policies that denigrate my family and ancestors do not help my American citizen interests.
  • See, when you say Haitians have AIDS, you are denigrating HAITIANS, not the conditions in Haiti.
  • Point of scientific order: AIDS is not a condition that attaches to, like, the land. It’s a condition that afflicts HUMANS, not polities.
  • Any denigrating remark I make about the shit-eating lawyers working for the DOJ should be taken as a statement about the putrid conditions at the DOJ, not the individual shitheads who work for it. (Sorry, I just wanted to try that argument myself. See, it doesn’t quite work, does it?)
  • The “presumption of regularity” to which “this President is entitled to” is peak normalization of Donald Trump.
  • He ceded any presumption of regularity when he was caught on camera talking about sexually assaulting women and didn’t immediately drop out of the race.
  • Shorter end to the paragraph: “In the alternative, nothing matters, lol.”

While this argument is an offensive joke, it is close to the heart of the case, and the heart of most cases against Trump. Whether the courts should treat Donald Trump like a normal president, or like Donald Trump, is what we always seem to be arguing. The Trump administration always wants us to ignore what Trump says, the media always wants to focus on it, and it seems like courts are always trying to decide what to do.

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Except, deciding whether Trump is “normal” or not is not what courts should actually be doing. What courts should do, what “judgment” entails, is figuring out when and how the Trump administration is lying. Here, Trump offered no valid reason for revoking TPS status in real time. We focus on the “shithole countries” thing, because that was his STATED REASON for revoking the status. The reasons that the government gives after the fact are the lie. That’s the pretext the government offers to achieve Trump’s mission of bigotry.

The DOJ lawyers who still want to be part of that lying farce should be ashamed of themselves. The judges who are amenable to be lied to by the government are bad at judging things. And the people who still support Trump are racist assholes for continuing to support his bigoted policies.

Donald Trump is an embarrassment to America. But the real damage he does is that the world knows that he speaks for millions of Americans, and that our institutions are reluctant to stop him. Under his leadership, we are the shithole country, and everybody else knows it.

You can read the government’s full brief here.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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