Thinking about @POTUS @realDonaldTrump? Me too.

Recently, President Trump was criticized – and sued in Federal Court – over one of his first Executive Orders in the first days of his office.

More specifically, it was his Executive Order No. 13767, signed January 25, 2017, and published January 30, 2017, entitled as “BORDER SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT IMPROVEMENTS” which has caused a justifiable stir.
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Search the historical record of Executive Orders:
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/disposition.html

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Some are all up in arms, again, justifiably so, not merely because of the mass confusion which it has created. In essence, what many have complained about is that many Permanent Resident Aliens (so-called “Green Card” holders) would have been denied re-entry into our United States for a period of 90 days if they were a citizen of, or have visited one of 7 so-called “nations of concern”: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

It should be remembered, however, that the so-called 7 “nations of concern” first began during the Obama administration.

In December 2015, President Obama signed H.R.158, the “Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015” into law. It was NOT an Executive Order. That law placed certain limited restrictions upon select travelers who had visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria on or after March 1, 2011. Two months later, the Obama administration added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen to the list, which it described as an effort to address “the growing threat from foreign terrorist fighters, many of whom are nationals of Visa Waiver Program countries.”

Creating chaos is part and parcel of Steve Bannon’s strategy.

Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History at Boston College, shared the following analysis on her Facebook page, which is excerpted in part here:

“What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries– is creating what is known as a “shock event.” Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

“Last night’s Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.

“Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.”

It’s important to understand that the Puppet Master POTUS Donald Trump is skillfully playing the people, and to NOT react according to how he wants people to react. It does not mean that he should be ignored (though that might not be a bad idea, per se) but to be wise to his manipulative ways.

Toward that end, I recall reading an OpEd published in the Kansas City Star by a former Republican President who was critical of the current Democratic President, and in part wrote the following:

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

The OpEd was entitled “Sedition, A Free Press, And Personal Rule,” was published May 7, 1918, and was written by Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt who by then, had been a private citizen 9 years.