Donald Trump sent the left into hysterics again, suggesting that he will give his convention acceptance speech later this month from the White House.
Republican Senator John Thune asked, “Is that even legal”?
“I assume that’s not something that you could do. I assume there’s some Hatch Act issues or something,” he said. “I don’t know the answer to that and I haven’t heard him say that, but I think anything to do with federal property would seem to me to be problematic.”
The Hatch Act seems pretty clear about the legality of Trump’s suggestion.
The Hatch Act prohibits partisan political activity by a federal employee in a government room or building or any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties, according to a memo posted by the Department of the Interior’s ethics office.
So is the president serious? Well, you decide.
“We’re thinking about it. It would be the easiest from the standpoint of security,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” when asked about a report in The Washington Post. “We’re thinking about doing it from the White House because there’s no movement and it’s easy.”
Trump said he would “probably” deliver the speech live from the White House but said the choice was not final and that he could change the plan if problems were raised.
Could he give the speech from the family living quarters in the White House? He could claim that he didn’t discharge any “official duties” there. He could also cite the pandemic as a reason for not traveling.
Thin? So thin it’s damn near invisible. But if Trump is looking for a way to draw attention to the speech…
Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t have a question of whether it was legal or not. She declared any such idea “legally wrong.”
“For the President of the United States to degrade once again the White House, as he has done over and over again, by saying he’s going to completely politicize it, is something that should be rejected right out of hand,” Pelosi said in an interview on MSNBC.
“It’s not serious thinking,” she continued. “It won’t happen, whether it’s legally wrong or ethically out of the question, it shouldn’t have been something that was expressed.”
Democrats always act as if Trump is the first president in world history to do this or that. In fact, all presidents have used the White House for political purposes. All of them. Every. Single. One. You can make the argument that Obama being filmed and photographed walking in the Rose Garden or boarding the Marine One helicopter on the White House lawn was a political statement. Presidents running for re-election give press conferences from the East Room in the White House. It’s ludicrous to suggest presidents running for re-election are stupid enough not to use the White House as a campaign backdrop or prop.
Admittedly, Trump is taking the idea of using the White House to run for president a bit too far by suggesting he’d give a partisan speech from the Oval Office. But how much of that was serious musings and how much was it typical Trump psyops against the left?
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