The Patriot Post® · Trump's Twitter-Heel

By Thomas Gallatin ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/47291-trumps-twitter-heel-2017-02-06

Challenges to Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel for people coming from seven nations have little legal support, irrespective of the recent actions by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart to block the order. The Justice Department has ably defended Trump’s EO, providing solid and substantive arguments based upon sound legal precedent — Trump’s actions were well within both constitutional parameters and the common practice of prior presidents. But honestly, that is not what all the fuss is about.

In reality, two battles are being waged. One is in the courts and the other is in that ever-shifting realm known as public opinion. The Leftmedia has long fought for control of the latter by appealing to people’s emotions rather than by presenting a rational argument. But the courts are supposed to be above this changing whim of public sentiment; in fact, they were designed to be as best as possible impervious to it, since it is the role of the courts to seek justice in an impartial manner.

In the area of public opinion, Trump has decided that it’s him versus the mainstream media. So, with typical reckless abandon, Trump swings out against his opponents in the public arena via his favorite tool of choice — Twitter. His tweets become points of contention in themselves, distracting from the cause at hand. On the one hand, many Americans appreciate his willingness to fight and they may even relish the manner in which he sticks it to the mainstream media, but on the other hand, some see the tone he’s setting as needlessly combative and self-defeating, and they’re left wondering how this rhetoric unifies a highly polarized nation.

Trump, unlike prior Republican presidents, is more than willing to jump into the fray. That’s good given how poorly the mainstream media has treated him and Republicans for years. However, his tweeting has proven more often to detract from rather than strengthen the argument. To be sure, Trump did not create the current over-politicized and polarized climate, but he has done nothing to combat it either. Trump’s policy decisions and choices have thus far been very good, but his tweeting ways have too often distracted from this fact.