Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’ Is So Disgusting And Backhanded That It’s Literally Illegal [Opinion]

Donald Trump has crossed a line with his new Muslim ban executive order, and it really goes to show that our new president needs to get his priorities straight and learn to do his job.

Last Friday, reports CNN, Trump signed a major executive order that many see as so ridiculously selfish and unjust that it has been called “the corrupt misconduct of a medieval potentate, not an American president.”

We are speaking of Trump’s Muslim ban bill. But people are not just upset that Trump is banning all Muslims rather than finding a way to weed out only the few dangerous and crazy Muslim extremists who might actually cause damage. That’s also upsetting to some, but we’ve known about his plans to do that for months — the proposed ban of Muslim immigrants entering the country was a large focus of his campaign, after all.

No, what they are infuriated about right now, comments NPR, is the shockingly nonpresidential incongruity between what Trump said he was going to do with the Muslim ban and what he is actually doing.

The executive order Trump signed on Friday, entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” bars Muslims from seven specific nations from entering America: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. On the surface, that might seem perfectly fair. Trump is not putting a ban on all Muslim people, only ones from the Islamic nations that pose a threat.

Well that might be valid if any of those countries were producing the “Muslim” lunatics that have been committing acts of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11. The fact is that none of the terror attacks committed in America in the past two decades have been carried out by people from any of those countries.

The biggest terrorist attack in recent history, 9/11, was carried out by Muslim crazies from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Countless other large-scale attacks since then were done by others from a variety of Muslim countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Dubai.

So why don’t these countries that may actually be sending over some terrorists fall under Trump’s Muslim ban? Well, it seems that Donald Trump, who rose to fame in the world of high finance, has business dealings with some very rich clients in the exempt nations. Trump is, assuming his claim about banning Muslim people from “terrorist states” is correct, compromising the safety of the country and the integrity of his own political platform as a way to appease his business partners.

Trump’s betrayal of his own plan is disgusting in several ways. Firstly, it basically means he is selling the right not to be discriminated against by the law.

“I don’t believe that our Constitution allows the president to order State Department and other U.S. government employees to discriminate between otherwise identical people, favoring those from countries he likes because they give him unconstitutional foreign emoluments, and punishing those from other countries that do not pay such personal and illegal tribute to him,” notes Norman Eisen, a former ethics adviser to President Obama.

Secondly, Trump is placing his own business interests above the welfare of the American people, which is obviously unacceptable for the president of the United States. Personal affairs (such as business dealings) have no place in government, and the sooner Trump realizes that, the better.

This is a complete conflict of interest, but is it illegal? Well, maybe. It’s hard to accuse Trump’s orders of breaking the law since the president is given quite a bit of leeway in terms of what he can have done, but there might be some hope.

A part of the U.S. constitution called “The Emolument Clause” declares that the high-ups in the American government cannot accept gifts worth a lot of money from foreign government officials. Do the large sums of money Trump is accepting from the governments of many Muslim countries count as a violation of that law? According to Eisen, yes.

“Normally he would, of course, have freer rein legally in these foreign policy, immigration and refugee matters, but his open and notorious violation of the Constitution changes that,” he explains.

“These decisions about who to let in and not to let into the United States can now be challenged, because there’s an unconstitutional basis for the president’s decision.”

Trump’s Muslim ban was blown up by the man himself, but will he feel the repercussions?

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]