A world in which there can be only one point of view and one way to do things

Bookworm brings to our attention an opinion piece by Frank Bruni in the New York Times. Bookworm writes,

Superficially, the column has a single point: the Mueller investigation is sucking so much oxygen out of the room that nobody is paying attention to what Trump is actually doing. In reality, though, it presents a world in which there can be only one point of view and one way to do things. All other viewpoints aren’t just different, they are unacceptable, even in a two-party democratic republic.

...However, while I’m always happy to blame Mueller for lots of things, the reality is that the silence on Trump’s other activities isn’t Mueller’s fault; it’s the media’s fault. Just see my reference, above, to the media’s “obsessive focus” on Mueller. Nobody is making them devote 90% of their time to that story; it’s their choice.

It probably suited Trump just fine to have the media off screaming about Mueller’s investigation, leaving him free to govern.

Just because Mueller is right about his major thesis, though, doesn’t mean he’s right about the minor thesis, which is that Trump has been committing governing atrocities all over the place. Apropos governing atrocities, when I think of them, I think of acts that violate the Constitution or the law of the United States. Some examples would be (1) allowing administrative agencies to legislate, as was the case with Obama’s HHS and EPA mandates; (2) weaponizing the IRS to shut down conservative groups during an election year; (3) spying on reporters; (4) entering into multi-million and billion dollar deals with foreign governments (the Paris Accord and the Iran Deal) without getting Congressional approval; (5) going into war in Libya without Congressional approval; (6) illegal gun-running into Mexico; (8) unilaterally changing Congressionally-legislated immigration laws to align with the Democrat Party platform, etc.

The real problem for me is that each of the above acts exceeded Obama’s executive power under the Constitution or out-and-out violated federal laws. It’s one thing for an executive to pursue legal and constitutional ends that jive with his political ideology, even if I disagree with that ideology; it’s another thing entirely for him to go rogue.

...I don’t recall Bruni expressing any horror at all when Obama announced “I won,” refused to cooperate with any Republicans, and turned his administrative agencies into legislative bodies implementing hard-Left policies throughout America without regards to legal or constitutional limitations.

...My simple point is that, for all of Bruni’s huffing and puffing about the fact that the Mueller investigation is hiding the true horror of the Trump administration, the real horror for Bruni is that the Trump administration exists at all — and that Trump, having been declared the winner in our two-party system, is using constitutional and statutory means to implement his promises and generally apply conservative policies within the parameters of his role as America’s chief executive officer.

Read more here.