We all laughed over the weekend when, in response to Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry saying that he didn’t want to go to the White House, Donald Trump responded with something akin to, “Yeah! Well, I disinvite you anyway!” It was yet another juvenile moment in a long line of juvenile moments this president has put on display since he got into office. He acts like a teenager, and we all feel secondhand embarrassment for our country every time he speaks.
In a most-epic “hold my beer” moment Sunday evening, Trump upped the ante on his presidential pettiness by creating a new travel ban that includes all but one of the countries covered in his previous ban and adds three new countries: Venezuela, Chad and North Korea, the Washington Post reports.
The new ban’s restrictions on Venezuela apply only to that country’s leaders and their families.
The newly revised travel ban comes at a time when the man in the highest office in our nation has been engaged in a childish back-and-forth with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over who has the biggest penis missiles. Trump called Kim “Rocket Man,” to which Kim responded by giving us the greatest insult ever: “dotard.”
Kim has repeatedly threatened to aim his missiles at the United States in response to things our puerile president has said to him, and it is entirely unfortunate that a childish game of foreign-diplomat one-upmanship has devolved into this, but here we are.
Trump’s new executive order suspends “immigrant and nonimmigrant” travel from North Korea to the United States, a move that can be viewed as being based entirely on childish pettiness because no one from North Korea travels to the U.S. anyway. The ban is symbolic, at best, and a further testament to the lack of impulse control possessed by the “leader” of the United States, at worst.
John Delury is an associate professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He told the Post, “They should have checked if there is North Korean immigration before they banned it. Why are you banning something that doesn’t exist?”
As the Post notes, when people defect from North Korea and end up in the United States, they have usually traveled through South Korea and are carrying South Korean passports.
North Korean diplomats are excluded from the new ban.
Delury told the Post that adding North Korea to the ban may be Trump’s way of appealing to a domestic audience and not an international one. It also appears to address the argument that the original ban specifically targeted Muslims, a fact that was heavily debated in courts across the country this year.
In response to the ban announced Sunday, the U.S. Supreme Court removed from its calendar oral arguments against the original ban (pdf), which had been set for Oct. 10, indicating that the new ban may render the cases against the old ban moot:
“The parties are directed to file letter briefs addressing whether, or to what extent, the Proclamation issued on September 24, 2017, may render cases No. 16-1436 and 16-1540 moot.
The parties should also address whether, or to what extent, the scheduled expiration of Sections 6(a) and 6(b) of Executive Order No. 13780 may render those aspects of case No. 16-1540 moot.
The briefs, limited to 10 pages, are to be filed simultaneously with the Clerk and served upon opposing counsel on or before noon, Thursday, October 5, 2017.
The cases are removed from the oral argument calendar, pending further order of the Court.”
Power move by Trump, or just more idiocy?
Find out on the next episode of White House Apprentice.
Read more at the Washington Post.