If you haven’t followed the recent antics of our once-esteemed Governor Doug Ducey, Tim Stellar has written a nice explainer.
In brief, Trump just made Gov. Ducey his bitch.
First, Trump threatened to shut down the Mexican border. So Ducey did the rational thing, and the right thing for the State: he said “That’s nuts! It would flatten Arizona’s economy,” or something like that in politicianese. Ducey flatly opposed a shutdown of the border. Great! Ducey stood up for Arizona against the blow-hard xenophobic President. Good optics. Good politics. Even his worst critics nod in approval.
But then immediately thereafter, Ducey makes an “unscheduled” visit to the White House. He comes out of that meeting with his tail between his metaphorical legs and pivots 180 degrees. “Now I support the shut-down of the border because of scary brown people, despite all that sense I made yesterday” you might imagine Ducey saying. “Boy, the President sure tanned my hide for telling people how stupid his border shutdown idea is,” you might further imagine Ducey admitting.
Thus does Ducey pull down his pants and show the entire nation his apple-red cheeks.
He fully humiliated himself, and this State, and then shit on the whole concept of self-respect. The President made Ducey swallow his own words, along with the remaining shreds of his credibility. Trump has proclaimed that the border is in such a state of emergency that it must be completely shut down, and there can be no dissent from some pissant border Governor!
The very next day, Trump proclaims that the emergency is so urgent that it can only wait a whole year! Wowie! Who saw that coming?
Governor Ducey went to bat for the Trump Team, at the cost of his own dignity and the prestige of his office, only to find that they called the game because Trump had bone-spurs again.
You should have known that Trump would never follow through on this threat to close the border, Doug. He probably had this idea on the toilet and tweeted it out before his staff could walk him back to sanity.
I guess they didn’t quite get him back on planet earth before you got frog-marched into the Oval and given your dressing down. If only you had waited a day or two more for a presser on the matter, you might have preserved some dignity.
As it stands, you not only look like a punk who knuckled under to the President’s worst idea yet, but then you got double-punked when the boss sobered up and left you holding his bagfull of a shitty idea.
The sting of that burn is never going to fade, and no one will ever forget what basic Trump chump you turned out to be.
Worst, from my perspective, is that you made a Governor of Arizona look like a lick-spittle lap dog. You denigrated the prestige of your office with your craven behavior. If you weren’t shameless, you would resign for having failed to stand up to a tin-pot wanna-be dictator. As it is, you will need to live with the fact that you enabled the lunacy of the worst President in American history.
You ought to do a full post on this, Meanie…
Gov. Doug Ducey is also siding with the Trump administration in its bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census despite concerns by some that it will cause an undercount that could cost the state millions — and maybe a congressional seat. Gov. Ducey supports effort to include citizenship question on 2020 Census, https://tucson.com/news/local/gov-ducey-supports-effort-to-include-citizenship-question-on-census/article_c3a2584c-74bb-5747-8146-d756918186d1.html
A federal judge in Maryland on Friday struck down the move by the Trump administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. A Third Court Rules That Trump’s Census Citizenship Question Is Illegal, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/a-third-court-rules-that-trumps-census-citizenship-question-is-illegal
U.S. District Judge George Hazel said the question violated the Constitution’s Enumerations Clause because it compromised the survey’s accuracy. The judge also ruled that the way in which the administration went about adding the question violated the Administrative Procedure Act. Yet, the challengers did not win on their claim that adding question was also a civil rights violation, as they failed “to show that the addition of the citizenship question was motivated by invidious racial discrimination,” according to the judge.
Hazel’s order blocked the Trump administration from including the question on the census, regardless of whether it found a way to do so in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act.
Hazel is the federal second judge to rule the question unconstitutional and the third to say the move to add it violated the administrative law.
However, whether the question stays on the upcoming decennial survey will ultimately be up to the Supreme Court, which has scheduled arguments on the issue for later this month.