Trump's Gettysburg Address: stock GOP plans plus unrealistic immigration plans

Earlier today, Donald Trump spoke in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and described what he'd do in his first 100 days as president. Obviously, he's not going to be president so it doesn't matter, but what he said shows just how flawed a candidate he is and how great a disservice his supporters have done to the U.S. by enabling him rather than demanding better.

It's not hard to imagine a low-wattage, pro-forma GOP candidate like Rick Perry saying almost exactly the same things Trump said in his speech. There are the standard GOP obsessions and giveaways to the wealthy, combined with completely unrealistic posturing on border security and immigration. Rather than challenging the elites, Trump's plans would end up helping them in various ways.

In fact, I challenge anyone to read parts of Trump's speech (a prepared for delivery at [1]) in Rick Perry's voice, or Chris Christies's voice, or any other similar GOP politician. It's hard to imagine John McCain proposing the same immigration plans, but if, after all this time, Trump is barely different from McCain, what use is he to the USA?

On the very first day in office, Trump promises to "pursue" the following:

  1. a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;
  2. a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);
  3. a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;
  4. a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;
  5. a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;
  6. a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

Trump wants people to "dream big", but Constitutional amendments are incredibly difficult to pass. #2 and #3 are sops to the Grover Norquist types and might impact programs and regulations that are needed for the general welfare. It's not hard to see the Democrats (or Republicans with sanity) from using #3 as a poison pill: eliminating a needed regulation to make room for another needed regulation, knowing it would all end up in the courts and would make the Republicans look bad. All of those items would only be "pursued" until they wound up being tied up in court for years. It would require a lot of intellectual work to get any of those, and Trump and his fans have amply demonstrated that doing such work is well beyond them.

It's going to be a long day, because Trump promises to do this too:

  1. I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
  2. I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
  3. I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator
  4. I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately
  5. I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
  6. lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward
  7. cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure

The only one on that list that he could actually do without lots of effort is #3, and that's because "labeling" can be done with a press release. The rest would wind up in court and be dragged out over years.

Thankfully Trump doesn't sleep much because he promises to do these on the first day too:

  1. cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama
  2. begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States
  3. cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities
  4. begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back
  5. suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.

The key word in the first is "unconstitutional". Under the U.S. system, it's up to the courts to decide whether something is unconstitutional or not. If something is truly unconstitutional, then the courts will have blocked it. It's not up to the president to decide the constitutionality of something. In any case, if Trump tries to cancel a high profile executive order like DACA, he's going to have yet another major legal fight on his hands. If he tries #3, it's not at all hard to imagine the Democrats blocking it or at least funding sanctuary cities in other ways. It's also not hard to imagine that ending up in the courts. Likewise with #4: immigration lawyers would rush to tie up the courts with cases trying to keep individual criminal aliens here. Of course, since Trump has praised the immigration enforcement activities of both Barack Obama and George W Bush and has revealed that his "deportations force" is just a flashier version of what Obama's already doing, he could fulfill promise #4 simply by doing what Obama has been doing (tarted up so his followers could understand it).

The major issues with Trump's regions ban has already been discussed. "Extreme vetting" is a stupid phrase that both sounds like the XGames and makes his vetting sound like something only extremists would support. No doubt some Trump advisors have pointed out to him the problems with both his regions ban and the phrase he uses, but he persists because he just can't figure things out.

In the remaining 99 days, Trump promises a "Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act" which you can be assured is a crypto-giveaway to the wealthy.

He'd "[establish] tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free". Not a bad idea, but that too would end up in the courts and once again Trump and his followers simply don't have the intellectual abilities to make such things happen.

To keep libertarians and the GOP happy, Trump promises vouchers and the GOP obsession of repealing Obamacare. Obviously, Congress and the courts would get involved and would almost assuredly stop both from happening.

There are a few other promises, but the dumbest of all are these:

7. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

9. Restoring National Security Act. ...establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values

Trump Wall is Trump's signature issue, and it's his most deceptive promise of all. If Trump tries it, it would be immediately tied up in the courts. All Democrats and many Republicans in Congress would strongly oppose it and would move to pull Trump's funding or, if they couldn't defund the Wall itself, would defund his other pet projects. Arizona's SB1070 was tied up in the courts for six years and was gutted. The same groups involved in shutting down SB1070 - American Civil Liberties Union, National Council of La Raza, etc. - would do everything in their power to stop Trump Wall. And, they'd get huge amounts of money from business interests and foundations to do it. Trump Wall is a Big Lie.

A wall on the border isn't even necessary: all that's needed is a "smart wall". Nothing that Trump or his fans have done indicates they're even capable of understanding that concept. They reject smart, effective plans in favor of idiotic, completely unrealistic pipe dreams.

And, of course, there's the "full understanding". Apparently Trump's going to send them a bill or something.

As with almost all his other wild promises, Trump's attempt to change sentencing would be tied up in the courts; it's not hard to see the ACLU choosing a slightly sympathetic test case and taking it all the way to the Supreme Court.

One of the many things Trump supporters will miss is the "ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first". To them that sounds like a good thing, but it also means that Trump supports guest workers and might push to even increase such programs. All such programs already promise that jobs would go to Americans first, but - oddly enough - it doesn't work out that way. If someone won't oppose guest workers as a concept, what makes you think they'd oppose big business pulling their typical tricks to hire foreign workers instead of Americans?

The ideological screening test is a good idea, if done in a smart way. As with everything else, that would fail because Trump and his fans just aren't that smart.

On the other hand, maybe Trump is outfoxing everyone. Maybe his plans are to flood the courts with lawsuits, tying up thousands of top lawyers in order to overload the system. If Trump tries a thousand things and there are only enough lawyers to tie up 999 of those things, then he'll have smooth sailing for that one remaining promise.

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[1] donaldjtrump . com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-delivers-groundbreaking-contract-for-the-american-vote1