Ever the showman, Donald Trump did something during his press conference that was another presidential first. He broke into song in the middle of his soliloquy about the need for a border wall. In a refrain that was sure to send shivers down the spines of those who see him as an aspiring tyrant, Trump mocked the judicial system in a sing-song voice, declaring that while he might experience a few bumps in the rutted constitutional road, victory at the hands of the Supreme Court was a foregone conclusion. It would be the Muslim ban all over again.
Not everyone was in harmony with Trump. Perhaps the most notable dissenter is Ann Coulter. Trump threw shade at her during his press conference. Rush Limbaugh is a tireless speaker. Tucker Carlson is a fine fellow. And Coulter? ‘I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t follow her. I don’t talk to her, but the press loves to bring up the name Ann Coulter,’ he said. She’s gone ‘off the reservation.’ The Right, he suggested, isn’t always right. Coulter and her ilk ‘don’t decide policy.’
Coulter wasted no time firing back. ‘The only national emergency,’ she said ‘is that our president is an idiot.’ Soon she will be a host on MSNBC waxing wroth about Trump’s perfidies with Bill Kristol and co.
Trump has other antagonists such as Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio who are loath to surrender the power of the purse to Trump. Rubio states that ‘no crisis justifies violating the Constitution.’ Other Republican legislators are sure to oppose raiding the Pentagon piggy bank to pay for a border wall.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, desperate to placate Trump, seems to see it otherwise. He crumpled in the face of Trump’s threat on Thursday, to refuse to sign a funding bill absent an emergency bill. The sheer weirdness of Trump’s press conference, in which he veered around wildly from praising China for liquidating drug dealers to professing his love for tariffs to claiming Barack Obama, whom he always derided previously as a wimp, was on the verge of war with North Korea until he came along, must have given McConnell a fresh case of heartburn. Trump didn’t even really make the case for an emergency declaration perhaps because he knows it’s bogus. He himself gave away the game when he declared, ‘I didn’t need to do this.’ Meanwhile, his erstwhile fan Coulter is busily tweeting about the 25th Amendment.
