There's a threat to humanity here, but it ain't Rosie
Trump's Saturday morning posts on Truth Social are even more disturbing than usual
By Sam Bellamy
This is a rhetorical question, but it shouldn’t be: Are any Republicans going to tell Donald Trump he’s not all-powerful and should not, under any circumstances, threaten to revoke the citizenship of any American?
Trump did exactly that Saturday morning in a post on his comically misnamed Truth Social platform.
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country,” he wrote, “I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
A threat to humanity? What’s she going to do, spit-take us to death?
Trump was apparently rankled by a recent TikTok post by O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland when he returned to the White House. In her post, she said more people will die, as they did in this month’s flooding in central Texas, because the Trump administration has gutted funding for weather forecasting.
The two have feuded for nearly 20 years now, and for a long while, it was just another boring celebrity spat. O’Donnell angered Trump in 2006 on ABC’s “The View” when she called him a snake oil salesman and questioned his moral fitness to run the Miss USA and Miss Universe beauty pageants. They’ve trade barbs periodically ever since, with Trump calling her “a pig,” among many other things.
But the pissing match crossed into extremely dangerous territory with Trump’s threat to take away her U.S. citizenship.
The New York Times and numerous news organizations easily found legal experts to point out the obvious – he has no such power.
Amanda Frost, an expert in citizenship law at the University of Virginia School of Law, provided a succinct summary to The Times: “In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Afroyim v. Rusk that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment bars the government from stripping citizenship, stating: ‘In our country the people are sovereign and the government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship.’”
It’s possible Trump will go no further with his threat. Although he’s surrounded himself with sycophantic and incompetent attorneys, perhaps one or two of them will urge him to focus on trampling the rights of immigrants rather than going after U.S. citizens – at least in this way.
As with most of his bizarre posts, some observers says Trump went after O’Donnell because he’s trying to distract attention from the internecine MAGA strife over the Jeffrey Epstein files. Maybe so, but Trump is obviously an impulsive man – “if A, then B” is beyond him. He reacts more than he thinks.
Epstein was clearly on his mind yesterday, though.
At Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA conference this week in Tampa, numerous Trump stalwarts such as Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham riled up the crowd of young extremists over the administration’s decision not to release any more Epstein files. Bannon said the controversy could cost the MAGA movement 40 seats in next year’s midterm elections.
Here is Trump’s reasoned response to the ongoing backlash from MAGA:
What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it? They haven’t even given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files. No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have Nuclear Weapons, it’s never enough for some people. We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any other Administration has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY. The Left is imploding! Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein. LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT! The 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024 — That’s what she is looking into as AG, and much more. One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
If any other president had posted or uttered such a screed in public, there would no doubt be discussions, maybe even across party lines, about whether it’s time to remove from power someone who is so clearly unhinged.
But grotesquely abnormal is the new normal, at least among Republicans in Congress. They’ll ignore this and probably even genuflect a bit more, just as they’ll ignore the spectacle of a U.S. president publicly threatening to strip citizenship from a political opponent.
The danger here, as we all know from experience, is that these screeds and threats soften up much of the population, gradually acclimating them to increasing levels of hatred and lawlessness. MAGA cult members have already shown immense tolerance for the destruction of democracy and basic decency.
Is there any point at which Republicans will speak up? That, sadly, is a rhetorical question too. The answer is obvious.