Bizarre, incredible, irresponsible, shocking — you could run out of adjectives describing this CNN segment before you exhausted your outrage.
Apparently, the network thought that, in the interest of informing the public, they should posit a scenario where Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Speaker Paul Ryan, and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch, would all be assassinated before 12 noon on inauguration day.
Since no Trump cabinet members have been confirmed, the presidency would go to the highest ranking Obama administration cabinet member left alive.
Isn’t that fascinating?
“On the day of the inauguration, as a precaution, a Cabinet secretary called the designated presidential successor will not attend the inauguration, ready to step in if something happens,” Todd said. “But, it won’t be a Trump Cabinet secretary, since none of them have been confirmed yet. It will be an Obama appointee.”
He said there was “no word from the White House on who that will be.”
Todd then asked an expert if the line of succession switches to the new presidency at noon.
The former director of the Continuity of Government Commission, John Fortier, explained that there are two lines of succession, one that is already in place and one that will not be in place until the inauguration is over.
” … And one which really won’t be in place until Donald Trump is inaugurated, comes into office, and actually formally nominates and the Senate confirms his people,” Fortier said. “You might actually end up with a president from the prior administration because of a tragedy.”
Since Secretary of State John Kerry will be officially out of office on Friday by noon, and Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee to head the State Department, will not be confirmed by then, the person to take over the position could be Obama appointee Tom Shannon, the undersecretary for political affairs.
He is the highest ranking non-political official.
Todd said Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman was the designated survivor during one of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union addresses.
“In 1997, during an address by President Clinton to Congress, he [Glickman] was the designated survivor,” Todd said.” He left Washington and went to his daughter’s apartment in Manhattan but he wasn’t alone. The role is a serious one and he says he was accompanied by a doctor, a military officer with access to the nuclear codes, and the Secret Service.”
Question: If Fox News had run a similar segment on January 19, 2009, the reaction of Democrats and the media would have been ….(fill in the blank)?
What was the purpose of this little exercise in Constitutional impossibilities? There’s a better chance that President Obama will appear before the press tomorrow morning and apologize for being such a royal screwup as president than there is that the Republican leaders in government will all go down in a hail of bullets or a massive bomb blast before noon.
This is a daydream by desperate, stupid people who have convinced themselves that the end times are upon us because Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States. They have talked themselves into hysteria because, of course, all their friends are hysterical about Trump and this reinforcing feedback loop gives certainty to their delusions.
Are they ever going to snap out of it? Or are we doomed to being treated to four years of every move Trump makes being a step toward fascism or Armageddon depending on the issue and the day of the week?
Hopefully, the press will lose interest and eventually move on to playing up a more conventional GOP hate. Meanwhile, pop some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy watching the meltdown.
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