Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi claimed on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that those who voted for President Donald Trump should question whether they are American anymore.
The MSNBC legal analyst unleashed a broadside of attacks against President Trump, purportedly based on the premise that Donald Trump’s invocation of the phrase that “he who saves his country does not violate any laws” is akin to imagining himself as the Emperor Napoleon.
The Guardian waxed apoplectic about the relatively innocuous statement, which is akin to Barack Obama saying he has a “pen and a phone” and can do things without Congress.
Critics rounded on Donald Trump on Sunday for likening himself to Napoleon in a “dictatorial” social media post echoing the French emperor’s assertion that “he who saves his country does not violate any laws”.
The post came at the end of another tumultuous week early in Trump’s second presidency, during which acolytes questioned the legitimacy of judges making a succession of rulings to stall his administration’s aggressive seizure or dismantling of federal institutions and budgets.
His defiance of some of those orders, including one ordering a restoration of funding to bodies such as the National Institutes of Health, has led to several of the president’s opponents declaring a constitutional crisis.
The courts separate democracy from autocracy. Will Trump defy them?
“He is the most lawless president in US history,” Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, wrote on Wednesday in the Guardian.
“This is bonkers. In our system of government, it’s up to the courts to determine whether the president is using his power ‘legitimately’, not the president.”
Trump laid out his position in the tweet posted on Saturday afternoon, after a round of golf at his Florida resort. The quote, as internet sleuths soon discovered, is a version of a phrase attributed to Napoleon “Celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi,” translated as: “who saves his country violates no law”.
Figliuzzi took it a step further and compared Trump to a mass murderer and a white supremacist.
“This Reince Priebus clip that you played, Nothing to see here, don’t worry, remain calm, he occasionally likes to take a grenade out and throw it on the floor to see what happens. I’ll tell you what happens when you play with a live grenade and toss it on the floor eventually it explodes. The only question for us is whether it’s going to explode back on Trump or explode and hurt the rest of us. My money is on both, by the way, people are going to get hurt and eventually it will blow back on Trump.”
He continued, “With regard to this statement…when he says, ‘Don’t worry that someone who saves his country cannot violate a law.’ It’s been attributed by some historians who aren’t certain to Napoleon, but I’ll tell you where. it’s definitely been used far more recently. That’s with a white supremacist, far right extremist named Anders Breivik in Norway, who killed 77 people in Norway.”
Figliuzzi added, “Now our president is quoting that white supremacist, Neo-Nazi murderer. If you voted for that, you you really need to question whether you’re American anymore. But that’s who’s using that kind of statement. Listen, does Trump sit and read Norwegian history? Hell no. Someone is handing him this story, this quote. We need to figure out who keeps spoon feeding him the white supremacy, white terrorist philosophy.”
This is in regards to a president who is merely attempting to reform the U.S. government, enforce immigration law, and make peace deals.
So much for measured and intelligent political discourse at MSNBC.
