Trump released his Executive Order Friday banning travel and immigration from seven nations without any implementation instructions to the people and organizations who would be responsible for enforcing it, and he made it effective immediately upon its release.
At first I asked myself, “Why would Trump release this EO in a way that would create such a high degree of chaos?” Could it be blazing incompetence on the part of him and his band of advisers? That explanation did not make sense.
Anyone with a brain in his/her head would say that making a significant change to travel and immigration regulations, which would have to be enforced by Customs/Immigration officials and employees of a slew of airlines, would have to be preceded by a set of explicit instructions for those “enforcers” on how to implement the requirements of such an EO. Without advance notice and instructions to these groups, releasing such an EO would surely result in tremendous chaos. And surely the Trump administration would not want to create worldwide chaos.
Or would it?
After considering the options, I can only conclude that Trump did not release the Executive Order and implement the travel and immigration ban, without adequate preparation because he and his band of advisers are grossly incompetent.
He did that to create a chaotic situation, which is exactly what developed.
And there is also this event: Trump took key people off the National Security Council and put his Chief Strategist Steve Bannon on the NSC in a move that is absolutely unprecedented.
Imagine the reaction if President Obama had put advisor Valerie Jarrett on the National Security Council. That is the equivalent to what Trump has done.
There is another point: there are an alarming number of vacancies in the State Department; some people have resigned, and there have been numerous reports that some of the vacancies were not created voluntarily, but that they were the result of a purge of key people in the State Department, ordered by Trump.
And, there is this: on Sunday, Trump’s Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, said that the seven nations included in Trump’s travel and immigration ban were chosen because they were chosen by President Obama. This explanation is hard to believe: If those nations were chosen because President Obama had identified them, then the Trump administration would have put forth that rationale on Friday, when the first questions about how those nations were chosen began to surface. But the Trump administration did not cite the Obama-dependent rationale until Sunday.
I smell a rat.
It appears that it is the goal of Trump and his cadre of henchpeople to institute martial law (the Bannon move on the NSC facilitates that goal quite well), which they will do if people rise up and protest in a violent and unruly way.
Remain calm and remember that we are a nation of laws, and most importantly, do not take Trump’s bait.