Donald #trump thinks his White House is running like a smooth and well-oiled machine. That is how the President began Friday's now infamous 77 minute news conference. Does Trump really believe he is succeeding when he excludes whole nations with an executive order widely seen as unconstitutional?

Trump vs. SCOTUS

Every indication is that Trump's Executive Order banning immigration from seven largely Muslim states will soon be delivered to the US Supreme Court, having been deemed unconstitutional by two lower-level courts. Given the present 4-4 composition of #SCOTUS between Justices deemed liberal and conservative, an educated guess is that there will be a majority decision to uphold the lower courts.

I am guessing that one or more of the conservatives will help create that majority. If and when that decision comes down it will be the first break in the wall of conservative acceptance of the Trump initiative. When that takes place, I believe we will hit a moment of truth. Trump will either modify to become a true President for all or he will stay in his fight mode and go to the wall. In which case all bets are off. Should the Court split, it would bode ill for the future, but it would not overturn the lower courts. There is not a prayer that the Court will uphold with its present lot of justices.

As we pursue Trump's imagery, we can only wonder whether his attack on American mainstream media, occasioned largely by their coverage of his immigration problems, is exactly that well-oiled.

To have the entire #MSM as an enemy is an invitation to a war that has never been attempted and which cannot, it seems, be won. And Trump himself is a child of the MSM. This begs the ethical and moral weight of the observation in the tweet below.

The 7-nation Muslim Ban and the war on mainstream media are not going to disappear, no matter how well-oiled Trump may feel things are.

But, that may not be what he means. He could mean a genuine effort to destroy democracy itself. Is Trump telling us he is on or even ahead of schedule in an effort to become an absolute demagogue? Is he seeking to destroy our government? Is he on a Bannon-type mission of destruction? Or does he have a narcissistic urge to become an absolute monarch just because he wants to?

Any such effort would intimidate America and establish a fear so absolute that Trump could rule with impunity. A well-oiled machine indeed.

Is Trump as smart as he claims to be?

If Trump is really a demagogue then he must be as smart as he has claimed to be, because Americans have not, in the past at least, flocked to such surmises. And yet I recall Trump wanted weapons rolling at his inaugural parade. And, with the likes of Steve Bannon whispering nihilistic things in his ear, I have my fears. A demagogue machine could prove hard to stop and lethal to oppose.
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