Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Morality. The only thing that can stop him does not exist in his human makeup. He's shown us over and over that feeling big is his morality, and profiting, just so's he can wet his beak in whatever scheme is afoot, like any successful Capo di tutti i capo, especially a Boss with a private secret police and a cowed congregation of political yes-men and the adoration of enough of those guys of a certain age who love a leader that inflicts pain on others. Kristi Noem, wearing a big cowboy hat like she just finished bartending all night at Bronco Billy's, was part of the applause in the peanut gallery, leading the charge for smearing a liberal white college educated urban woman as a "domestic terrorist."
If the murder of that woman in her car in the streets of Minneapolis -- we all saw it unfold, from several different angles -- if that horrific police-state action by masked and heavily armed men doesn't awaken a moral qualm in you, then maybe Trump threw open your basement door and terrible things have escaped.
He's made his piggy J.D. Vance claim "self-defense" for ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who shot at the Minneapolis woman three times while she was pulling away from him:
ICE officers have no authority to search a US citizen or arrest her (unless there’s probable cause to believe she’s harboring undocumented individuals, not a contention here). A woman surrounded by masked, armed men who have no law enforcement authority over her has every right to try to escape. Video shows her steering wheel is turned to the right, clearly an attempt to leave WITHOUT hitting anyone and steer clear of the officer standing towards the front of her car. That officer had time to step to the side, which is where he was when he shot her.
Even a real police officer would not have the right to shoot at her for trying to flee. This is well-established in the case law; deadly force may not be used simply to prevent someone from getting away. Given that the ICE officers had no law enforcement authority to begin with, AND the video footage shows she was trying to escape a perceived threat, not to kill anyone, the crime is all the more inexcusable.
We have to hope that citizens with their smart phones will always be filming these secret police. We apparently have no video of the shooting of two individuals in Portland last night, and gawd knows what rights were violated.
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