Weekend of shame

Trump’s immigration ban and the lemmings of our Oklahoma delegation

It was a weekend of shame. After President Trump signed an executive order on Friday, effectively banning Muslims from seven countries from entering America, including, as it turned out, ones who had a legal right to be here, you would have expected our Oklahoma legislative leaders, being freedom and religious-loving patriots, to denounce such a policy.

You’d be wrong.

Throughout Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, they were silent; then on Monday and Tuesday, they hid behind and then peddled deceptive right-wing pablum about “temporary” bans and “thoughtful reviews,” as if this president—this president— wishes to further study the intricacies of immigration before formulating a policy.

Leadership!

To review; the order, entitled  “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals” suspended, in part, visas for at least 30 days to all visitors, students (including green-card holders) from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen (where Trump doesn’t have business interests) but excluded countries like Qatar, Turkey, UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia (where Trump does).

Once again: Saudi Arabia, where 19 of the 20 9/11 terrorists resided was not on the list.

This was, incidentally, one of 12 executive action and memorandums Trump signed his first week in office.

“He should not be using executive order,” Representative Jim Bridenstine said.

Bridenstine said that, you may recall, about President Obama, who issued 146, in his first … four years. 

(Trump’s pace for his first term: 2496.)

Bridenstine, incidentally, said nothing about Trump’s use of them.

Let’s continue.

After the issue exploded, though, and airports started filling with refugees and pro-bono lawyers, Trump said, “It’s not a Muslim ban.”

It was a Muslim ban.

Rudy Giuliani said Donald Trump asked him to work out how he could legally implement a “Muslim ban.”

“He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally,’” the former mayor, who has been advising President Trump, said on Fox News Saturday.

It was Christmas here, years back, and the organizers of the Tulsa’s Christmas Parade of Lights had just changed the parade’s name in order to be more inclusive, and Senator Jim Inhofe was having a big sad.

Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator and former mayor of Tulsa, had rode horseback in the city’s Christmas “Parade of Lights every year—“as his children and grandchildren watched”—until last year, when he quietly refused to do so.

Over a name change.

Such was his commitment to religious freedom. 

“In recent years, we have seen a growing number of reports of religious minority groups being violently persecuted around the world. We have seen the burning of churches, the mass execution of religious communities, and the kidnapping and child-trafficking of young girls simply because of their families’ religious affiliation. The United States has a moral responsibility to lead in the international effort to protect the rights and freedoms of these minority groups,” said Inhofe.

That was a 2015 bill, the Bi-partisan Religious Freedom Resolution (S.Res.69), Inhofe introduced, along with Senator Lankford and Congressman Bridenstine (among others) that  sought protection of religious minority rights and freedoms. 

But not, apparently, if you wear a hijab.

“I’m looking now at territory,” the president said, effectively explaining how he’d sell this. “People were so upset when I used the word ‘Muslim.’ Oh, you can’t use the word Muslim. Remember this. And I’m OK with that, because I’m talking territory instead of Muslim.”

Knowing that, knowing the executive order was designed to stop—all legal fig leafs to the contrary—Muslims from entering the country, where were Senators Inhofe and Lankford, Representatives Bridenstine and Mullin, on singling out one faith group for discrimination?

Not answering the phone.

On Saturday, after the announcement, Ziva Branstetter of The Frontier wrote on Facebook, “I discovered that Jim Inhofe has five offices at taxpayer expense and the voicemail boxes at all five are full. The voicemail at the DC offices of Senator James Lankford and Rep. Bridenstine are also full.”

There was more. 

When the Trump Administration issued a statement to commemorate the Holocaust late last week, it cruelly left out any mention of Jews. When the administration doubled down, when Hope Hicks, a presidential spokesperson, said, “Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” where were our representatives about the slight to Jews? 

I contacted Mark Warren, former executive editor of Esquire, who, in his 28 years at the place, had the misfortune of long-term exposure to congress (once interviewing 90 members for a piece) and asked his take on why so many elected GOP representatives were silent or reticent.

“My sense is that they were taken almost completely by surprise by what contemptible and contemptuous amateurs these assholes are,” Warren said. “I guess they didn’t fully realize that the administration’s hatred for norms was so complete that it extended to the norms of basic—and I mean basic—competence.”

How incompetent?

John F. Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security, had dialed in from a Coast Guard plane as he headed back to Washington from Miami. Along with other top officials, he needed guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order. Halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. “The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,” the official said.

Warren sees the unraveling, the existential danger, the darkness ahead.

“Angry people with a long list of grievances and who see enemies everywhere have just assumed the most powerful position in the world.”

But even that wasn’t enough to waken our Oklahoma representatives, and surely they they have been around long enough—Inhofe certainly—to know that something worrisome, unique, bellicose, and perhaps uncontrollable has been unleashed in America. 

Tulsa Republican Mayor G.T. Bynum, meanwhile, issued the following: “I want our immigrant community in Tulsa to feel safe, feel welcome, and feel this is a place of opportunity for future generations of their families.” 

Was it enough? No. But simple acts of wisdom and courage are a start. 

There were other Republicans who were out front on this. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona comes to mind, who said as early as last year, during the GOP convention that the GOP was in need of purging, “Those who want a Muslim ban, those who will disparage individuals or groups—yes, we ought to, we need to.”

Now, compare that to the tepidity of Senator James Lankford, who on the Sunday after the executive order, finally released the following: 

“It is not a ban on Muslims or a permanent change in immigration policy. However, this executive action has some unintended consequences that were not well thought out.”

Please.

“Not a ban on Muslims.”

That was the talking point.

Representative Mullin issued the same statement; Senator Inhofe issued it; Representative Bridenstine issued it.

You couldn’t find a vertebra in any one of them with a miner’s helmet, a flashlight, and a spinal tap.

These are not representatives, they’re lemmings, and willingly deceived ones, too, for the president, himself, said it was a ban on Muslims. 

He campaigned on a ban.

Reading a statement he had released earlier in the day, the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

What happened over the weekend, from the executive order’s gestation, to its execution, to its arbitrariness, to reports that that DHS officials were still enforcing the ban even after judges in New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts issued stays turned this nation inside out. The least we could have expected from our Oklahoma delegation was to acknowledge the turmoil, to express their outrage that the ideals of a nation they otherwise cherish were being compromised on tarmacs at JFK, Dulles, and DFW, to not insult those same people on the some tarmacs, as Inhofe did, when he wrote, “Throughout its history, the United States has been a beacon around the world for religious freedom and has welcomed those seeking refuge from persecution; our country will continue to be that beacon.”

No it won’t, not with this administration. He knows it. And won’t fight for it.

It wasn’t just the hypocrisy of Oklahoma’s representatives on display this past weekend—it was their political DNA.

For more from Barry, read his open letter to Governor Mary Fallin.