Does Trump understand the U.S. Constitution?

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Friday September 16, 2016 · 8:36 AM PDT

2016/09/16 · 08:36

Khizr Khan asked Donald Trump: 'Have You Even Read the Constitution?" I heard Donald Trump give several responses to the Khan family. I never heard him actually respond to the direct question and answer whether he has actually read the U.S. Constitution. I’m sure at some point in school he’s read it like everybody, but I seriously doubt he has any sophisticated understanding of this complex document. I'd like to hear an enterprising journalist ask him some basic questions about the Constitution that I cover in my college level U.S. Government course with my students:

What are the Constitutional powers of the Presidency? What are the powers of the U.S. Congress? What is the "elastic clause?"
What is the "commerce clause?"
What is the "equal protection clause?"
What is the importance of the first amendment?
What is the importance of the "reservation clause" of the 10th amendment?
What is the importance of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th, 22th, and 26th amendments to the Constitution?
How do you amend the Constitution?
What was the significance of the Great Compromise in the writing of the Constitution? What was the significance of the 3/5 Compromise in the writing of the Constitution?

I know Obama and Clinton could answer these questions easily. I’m sure JEB Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and most other leading Republicans could answer these questions. Something tells me that Donald Trump might have great difficulty giving answers to these questions.

Trump becomes Satire

ProfessorDavid

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Sunday August 16, 2015 · 8:34 AM PDT

2015/08/16 · 08:34

I am not making this up. In Donald Trump the political campaign has become satire

Chuck Todd, Meet the Press, August 16, 2015: "Who do you talk to for military advice right now?"

TRUMP: "Well, I watch the shows. I mean, I really see a lot of great-- you know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows and you have the generals and ... you have certain people that you like ... "

Compare that to Chauncy Gardiner (played by Peter Sellers in the famous 1979 political satire, Being There):

REPORTER #2: "Sorry to persist, sir, but it would be of great interest to me to know what newspapers you do read?"

CHANCE: "I do not read any newspapers. I watch TV."

TV REPORTER: "...Do you mean, Mr. Gardiner, that you find television's coverage of the news superior to that of the newspapers?

CHANCE: "I like to watch TV."

Sign Petition to Save Sesame Street

ProfessorDavid

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Saturday August 15, 2015 · 8:58 AM PDT

2015/08/15 · 08:58

Sesame Street is now undergoing partial privatization. Budget cuts have forced it to sign a contract to send its first-run episodes to HBO and they will only belatedly be posted on PBS. This creates a class bias where the middle class children will get the first-run of Sesame Street and poor kids will have to wait around get the leftovers months later. Sesame Street has been a FREE public education program for 45 years and should remain so. This is part of a conservative agenda to privatize public assets.

Please sign my petition to save Sesame Street from privatization on the White House "We the People" website:

Please sign our petition and post the link anywhere you can.

ProfessorDavid

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Thursday September 13, 2012 · 11:36 PM PDT

2012/09/13 · 23:36

Watching a film like Dinesh D'Souza 2016: Obama's America is the type of surreal experience that could make a political scientist, like myself, cry. The film is a such a remarkable combination of misinterpretation, psycho-babble, selective use of facts, and outright lies that it is hard to even know where to begin. D'Souza wants us to believe that America has elected a President that no one knew anything about who is actually an anti-colonialist, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist seeking to undermine America's future. This is supposed to be as a result of the great influence that his long dead anti-colonialist father who he hardly knew had over him. The evidence is selective, distorted and underwhelming. D'Souza essentially starts with an ideological conclusion about who Barack Obama really is and then searches for the evidence to prove his false thesis. D'Souza's film is one of the most ridiculous acts of historical distortion ever perpetrated somewhere between the big lie propaganda of the Nazis and bad comedy which made me laugh.

ProfessorDavid

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Monday December 19, 2011 · 5:23 PM PST

2011/12/19 · 17:23

The politics of the Republican Party have now entered a political time warp that signifies its inability to adapt to the realities of modern American life so that instead they seek to take our government back to its origins. This involves playing on the politics of fear-mongering with a mentality that offer solutions that are entirely backwards looking in order to take the country back to the better days of the American past. They argue that we can return our economy and our society back to better days of the past by taking our government back to what it was decades and even centuries ago. Thus it is no accident that they have often chosen to anchor their movements in historical names from the American Revolution such as the Minutemen and the Boston Tea Party. For fundamentalists (both religious and political), the past is always better than the present and the goal is always to return to the way things used to be. Thus modern social, economic, and political norms – indeed modernity itself – are their enemy. They are attempting to return our government to an idealized version of its past which is preferable to the realities of modern America which clash with their imagined version of how great America once was and therefore should be again.

ProfessorDavid

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Saturday August 13, 2011 · 9:53 PM PDT

2011/08/13 · 21:53

Well, it is finally official; Texas Gov. Rick Perry is running for President. I believe those of us here in Austin have a responsibility to tell the rest of the world about Rick Perry. He is unfit to be President. Most of the recent news has been on Perry's championing of The Response along with its many anti-gay, anti-Muslim co-sponsors. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg on how bad Rick Perry is. Please spread the word. Here are the top 10 Items in Rick Perry’s Record that you need to know.

ProfessorDavid

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Saturday September 20, 2008 · 5:37 PM PDT

2008/09/20 · 17:37

A friend recently wrote an email asking four important questions about why the polls are so close in some swing states. My answers follow:
Questions:

How could they be tied in PA and Iowa? Obama going to win those two going away. Write it down.

When and how did McCain pull so far ahead in VA? Need Jim Webb and Tim Kaine to get out on the stump!

And, if these surveys are only conducted via land lines doesn't that skew the findings given the many people who only use cell phones? And, aren't those cell phoners generally much younger - those most likely to vote Obama?

Don't all polls that survey an election with an AA candidate fail to reflect the Tom Bradley/Harold Ford effect? How scary is that?

ProfessorDavid

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Saturday August 30, 2008 · 2:46 PM PDT

2008/08/30 · 14:46

Let's try and get inside the mind of John McCain and figure out why he has chosen an unknown, under qualified Alaska governor as VP nominee. It is actually not as mysterious as it seems. There are 3 key factors: 1) The need for an out-of-the-box history-making pick, 2) the desire to try close the gender gap, and 3) the need for a social conservative that would firm up his support with the right of his party.

ProfessorDavid

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Wednesday July 30, 2008 · 1:39 PM PDT

2008/07/30 · 13:39

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is heading for the dustbin of history. The scandal-plagued Israeli leader has just announced he won't seek re-election and will turn over the Prime Ministership after his Kadima Primary elects a new leader on September 17. It is very likely that shortly thereafter Israel will go to new elections - probably by early 2009.

While there is no guarantee, having watched Israeli politics for years I would speculate that Israelis might just follow the American lead. That is If the US elects McCain, Israelis will elect Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu. If Americans elect Obama, Israelis are more likely to turn to the new Kadima party leader, possibly current Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

ProfessorDavid

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Sunday July 27, 2008 · 10:14 AM PDT

2008/07/27 · 10:14

Last week, Israeli historian Benny Morris argued on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times that Israel "will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites" in coming months. He argued that this would be a positive development, because if Iran gets a nuclear bomb the "Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war."

Much of what Morris says in his column entitled, Using Bombs to Stave Off War is quite logical, but there are several underlying and incorrect assumptions that undermine his argument. First, Morris assumes that diplomacy will fail. There is no reason to assume that a diplomatic solution, which the United States and the Europeans have been pursuing, cannot be achieved.

Second, Morris asserts that because all of Israel's leaders say that Iran getting a nuclear bomb means Israel's destruction that this is indeed the case and necessitates an Israeli first strike. Dr. Morris takes both the rhetoric of Iranian and Israeli leaders too much at face value. Rhetoric is a political tool, not an expression of what political leaders actually intend to do.

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Does Trump understand the U.S. Constitution?

Trump becomes Satire

Sign Petition to Save Sesame Street

Review: The Absurd Lies in D'Souza's 2016: Obama's America

The Republican Party’s Political Time Warp

10 Things You Need to Know about Rick Perry

Why are the polls so close? The Importance of Race

Why Sarah Palin?

An Opportunity for Mideast Peace - The Obama Connection

The Problem with Benny Morris on Iran