John Oliver: Waiting at an Omelette Bar Is the Kind of Thing You Do When There’s a Nat’l Emergency

EXCERPT:

OLIVER: “But the major drama since we left has been President Trump’s repeated attempts to get Congress to fund his border wall, including shutting the government down for nearly a month. And this Friday he tried a new approach.”
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KEILAR: “Underway right now, President Trump declares a national emergency in an attempt to get billions for a border wall.”
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OLIVER: “Yes. According to Trump, the border suddenly constitutes a national emergency - or as he might spell it in a tweet, ‘The berder cornstitdutes a nertional ederdency!’ And to be clear, there is zero actual emergency at the border right now. Illegal crossings have been declining for 20 years. And as we talked about before on this show, a wall would be expensive and completely ineffective. But putting those aside, declaring a national emergency is a big step. Emergency declarations are meant to temporarily enhance the President’s power during a legitimate crisis. So Trump needed to sell this as a real emergency, and yet within minutes of declaring it, he said this.”
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TRUMP: “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
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OLIVER: “Well, it’s not an emergency then, is it? Also, for the record, there is no way that’s the first time this week that Trump has claimed, ‘I could do this over a longer period of time, but I’d just rather do it much faster. Happy Valentine’s Day!’ And as if that weren’t bad enough, he responded to this newly declared emergency by just hours later flying off to Florida over the weekend where he has apparently been photographed waiting at an omelette bar. You know, the kind of thing you do when America is in crisis. Now, unsurprisingly, there were legal challenges filed almost instantly, which shocked nobody including Trump himself.”