Once upon a time, ABC News correspondent and host Ted Koppel was a rational guy.
His long-running (1980-2005) “Nightline” series was generally informative, even-keeled, and entertaining.
But like nearly every other mainstream journalist in the age of President Donald Trump, Koppel has revealed his true colors: He’s just another Left-wing hack who has lost all ability to think reasonably and rationally.
Now contributing at CBS News, Koppel on Sunday spun a wild conspiracy theory that the president is about to vanquish the Constitution utilizing “Presidential Emergency Action Documents,” or PEADs — which have been in existence (and continually updated) since the Eisenhower administration and the early days of the Cold War.
One lunatic Koppel had on with him even claimed the PEADs represented a “blueprint to dictatorship.”
“I think I know as much about the PEADs as any other American citizen, which is almost nothing at all,” the ACLU’s David Cole said (now there’s an unbiased legal group).
Koppel intoned:
David Cole is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. And he is concerned about the vast array of presidential emergency powers that we know about. Under the national emergencies act of 1976 alone, the president can declare a national emergency just by signing a proclamation.
Except that he can’t, per se. Remember when Trump declared a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border and wanted to use unassigned Pentagon funds for his border wall? Yeah, that was challenged in court and a federal judge ruled it illegal.
In any event, Cole got into the fear porn.
“We’ve got a president, who in his first week in office essentially declared ban Muslims from coming into the country,” he said.
“More recently, declared a widely understood to be a fake emergency in order to build a border wall when Congress told him they would not give him the funds to create a border wall, and most recently, has declared he may need to delay the election, which would be an emergency authority that doesn’t even exist. So, I think you have to be very concerned,” he added.
Remember the last time libs were “concerned” about a president using PEADs before Trump?
Yeah, we don’t, either.
Koppel the crackpot then brought up John Yoo, a U.C. Berkeley law professor who worked in President George W. Bush’s Justice Department.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, Professor Yoo was at the White House discussing executive power with President Trump,” Koppel said.
That settles it! The end of the Constitution is nigh!
Except that, again, PEADs are periodically updated because the world changes, as do threats. Oh, and Koppel noted Yoo said he had no problem with key members of Congress (from both parties) being briefed on the updated PEADs.
But remember, he had a conspiracy theory to sell so he brought in former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado to gin up the fear.
“I want them public because they reflect the freedom and liberty and rights of every American citizen. I can’t say it any better. This is a blueprint for dictatorship,” he said.
Only, they can’t be public because that would be akin to letting our enemies know what the White House will do and how it will react in certain situations. Dumb.
The lunatics in the Democrat Party and their sycophants in the media have been claiming for years that Trump is a ‘tyrant.’ This but this latest tinfoil hat conspiracy from Koppel takes the cake.
