What are we doing here? The New York Times has a big article about how the administration’s argument for why President Donald Trump can build the ark is that he already has congressional approval.
Yes, the 1925 Congress reached through time and approved the arc…with its spirit?
The administration has addressed this topic in court before, but let’s be real: the current Department of Justice is kind of a “throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks and yell at the judge if it doesn’t” kind of thing right now, so they’ve honestly addressed just about every argument in court at this point.
But that seems to be the argument the administration has settled on as The One. The idea is that because Congress reviewed the 1924 plans as part of the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission and those plans called for two “thin, widely spaced columns,” that means they approved an arch.
Trump introduced Mark Paoletta as the strongest soldier on the arch, with Paoletta writing an article for The Federalist explaining how necessary this is: “It is a national embarrassment that policymakers have neglected for more than 100 years to build a congressionally authorized monument on this circle. »
There’s a national embarrassment here, mate, but that’s not it.
It is painfully absurd to demand that we all pretend that for more than 100 years, no one knew that Congress had secretly approved an arc and that only President Donald Trump, in his infinite and majestic wisdom, discerned that this approval had echoed through time.
Like, come on, man. Do you two even get along?
I don’t know if this is better or worse than the argument that the ark would also serve as a military installation, so its construction is a matter of national security.
Related | Trump Claims Congress Said Yes to His Big Stupid Bow – 102 Years Ago
Paoletta is making the rounds because he’s the new chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, which Trump stuffed a long time ago with creepy types of bootlickers, and Paoletta is one of the bootlickers.
Paoletta was one of Trump’s favorites, who would sort of step in whenever necessary. He was an attorney at the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term and did some cool things, like participating in the attempt to shake up Ukraine that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
If you feel like you know that name, it’s because you’ve wasted your life paying too much attention to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Paoletta is Thomas’s best friend from college or otherwise, and played a key role in his confirmation. He later wrote the lamest hagiographical book ever made about Thomas, with a corresponding film, both called “Created Equal.”
Sigh.
Did I mention that the film was paid for by Leonard Leo? Yes, Mr. Dark Money is remaking the Supreme Court himself.
Did I mention that Paoletta is one of the guys in the creepy, realistic photo of Harlan Crow’s escapade? Yes, the Harlan Crow who has enthusiastically bribed Thomas for decades. Yes, the Harlan Crow who owns some of the creepy statues now in Trump’s Rose Garden. Yes, the Harlan Crow who has a “Garden of Evil”, where he has statues of his favorite dictators.
Somehow all the bad things we experience always converge on the same handful of terrible people.
I don’t mean to be catastrophic, but given the way this Supreme Court has been so willing to let Trump build the grand ballroom of bribery, it seems painfully likely that he could build the ark.
However, the conservatives of the Court will not have the audacity to say exactly that. They will do it as they did at the grand ballroom at the bribery palace – on the shadow docket, with no real explanation, bringing to their knees the lower courts who actually considered the case. But the decision will not be on the merits of whether or not he can build the arch; he’ll just say he can build it while they think long and hard about it.
This thing is going to be like the Reflecting Pool. It will cost a lot more than expected, look terrible, and even fall apart while it’s being built.
But it’s actually a plus. Since it will be as well built as the Temu Arch replica from this summer’s Freedom 250 festivities, the one that started oozing thick yellow liquid within days, it will be easy for us to demolish the whole thing. Because we are sure of it.
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