Whether you like Rosie O’Donnell or not is completely irrelevant. Keep it to yourself. O’Donnell was born in 1962 in Commack, New York, just down the road from me. For better or worse, she is an American, and she will, as a matter of law, remain an American unless and until she chooses to relinquish her American citizenship. She can move to Ireland. She can call Trump names. She can militate against his worst impulses and best, and yet the law holds her to be an American. Of this, no one but an absolute ignoramus can dispute.
Shortly before 10 a.m. on Saturday, Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
The president called Ms. O’Donnell a “threat to humanity” and said she should stay in Ireland, where she moved to in January after Mr. Trump won a second term.
It is almost certain that Trump said this for one of two reasons. The first is his ordinary impulse and lack of filter, where whatever nonsense pops into his head comes out his mouth without the slightest consideration of “is this completely idiotic?” causing him pause.
The second reason is that he needed to find something so outrageous that people would get whiplash spinning their heads away from Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi, flipping from the Epstein Client List is on her desk to there is no Epstein Client List and Trump is definitely not on it. Trump said Bondi was doing a “FANTASTIC JOB!” and nobody cared about Epstein anyway, convincing nobody of either.
Too legally keen to get swept up in the Rosie citizenship silliness, I snarked my way around it when a serious explanation of why a president cannot revoke citizenship from natural born citizens appeared on the twitters. “Why Trump can’t repeal the law of gravity,” I wrote, dripping with sarcasm, as if the whole episode was so ridiculous as to be unworthy of moment’s thought. I was then made to understand the error of my ways.
Well, when her citizenship is revoked, she no longer gets due process protections to contest (because she’s an illegal immigrant), and is sent to CECOT in El Salvador, at which point, she’s beyond US law, that even if a US court orders it, he can’t bring her back.
And just in case I remained too thick to grasp the message, Rob Graham reduced it to its essence.
The point being: you and I know he can’t, but I’m not sure he knows this.
Whether Trump doesn’t “know,” as in there is no lawful mechanism by which he can strip a natural born citizen of her citizenship, or doesn’t care is a superfluous detail. The point is that he can make a royal proclamation that Rosie O’Donnell is a threat to Trump’s America and hence is no longer an American, as she’s seized by Border Patrol at the airport and put on a plane to El Salvador, without anyone knowing and without anyone able to prevent it.
As the Stephen Miller administration has already made clear through its chief legal scholar, the Honorable-hopeful Emil Bove III, there is no coming back from CECOT, where she will be imprisoned for the rest of her unAmerican life, and over which no American judge has jurisdiction to tell the president that he has limitations on his power.
Completely impossible under the law? Absolutely. And so what? Physically, it’s easy to accomplish. After all, one must pass through immigration to enter the United States, whether citizen, visitor or migrant. Granted, there is a line for American citizens where they used to check your face against the database, maybe stamp the passport and mutter “welcome back” if they were so inclined. But if it was persona non grata, you wouldn’t make it past the booth before people with guns, a vest and maybe a mask grabbed you by the arms and yelled to go with them. After that, poof. It’s over.
There is a cohort among the MAGA faithful willing to accept the notion that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. So what if, in the process of ridding the motherland of “illegals,” you nab a few legals together with some citizens here and there for the crime of looking Hispanic. How else is the government to remove millions of migrant criminals Marine parents at volume without sweeping them up based on accent, appearance or hanging out at Home Deport? Mistakes will be made, but it’s the price of cleaning up the mess.
And should Rosie O’Donnell, who the president says is a threat because she is so very, very mean to him and hurt his feelings so deeply, be one of the broken eggs that disappears into the mist, who will miss her anyway? The only thing stopping Trump from making this happen is the law, and as he’s already made abundantly clear, the law is something about which he neither knows nor cares. Why would it stop him now?
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In my heart of hearts, my brain of brains, and my stomach of stomachs, not to mention my pinky of pinkies, I want so very much to believe that if it were Rosie enveloped in such a maelstrom of insanity, even SCOTUS as currently constituted would say, “Whoa, Nellie” (or “Whoa, Rosie” as the case might be). There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s … gulp.
Thanks, Scott, for making certain things clear. This is moving along the line toward what if Trump ordered the assassination of one of his opponents.
I choose to believe there is a big red line between generally ignoring the law and assassinating someone. I want to think murder is different and not even the most ardent Trump supporters with guns will murder upon his command.
You don’t know ardent Trump supporters, or what is going on with the FBI in Connecticut.
Obama had no trouble finding people to carry out targeted assassinations, and there’s no reason to think Trump would.
The Constitution speaks as to her citizenship, but is silent about assassination, no?
More generally, for years it seems media is unwilling to aggressively question politicians about stupidity and/or lies. It seems worse with Trump because of the frequency of stupidity and lies, but left and right politicians seem to get away relatively unchallenged or media satisfied with a non-responsive non-answer.
Comparing the assassination of a terrorist on foreign soil which collaterally involves a relative who is American is hardly the same ordering the assassination of a political rival on US soil. Only people who are so desperate to make up excuses for Trump would raise such an absurd comparison.
I wouldn’t count on that.
FWIW, I think you nailed it when you said Trump is trying to distract from the Epstein debacle.
Sarah Mathews, former press aide to Il Douche, predicted this; “[H]e is going to try to shift the news cycle this week by either saying something very controversial or doing something controversial… Because he does not want us to be talking about Jeffrey Epstein.”
Steve Bannon suggested that denying/ covering up the existence of an Epstein client list will cost the GOP 40 Congressional seats in the midterm elections. I doubt it will be that damaging… but “Hope springs eternal”.
Obviously, there is not a legal option to take her citizenship per se. However, the courts have yet to take targeted drone assassinations by presidential fiat off the table, even for U.S. citizens. Accordingly, people declared “a threat to humanity” by one who exercises that power should probably observe a measure of caution.
Perhaps in the future, there will be a Rosie O’Donnell museum in Ireland, much like the Charlie Chaplin Museum in Vevey, Switzerland. The beginnings of a world tour of artists spurned by the nation in which they rose to prominence.