You know how it’s going to be: no matter what Trump says or does, for the far left, it will be wrong, stupid, immoral and more, all rolled into one. And so when Trump demanded that Maine’s Democrat Gov. Janet Mills apologize for her initial defiance of Trump’s executive order banning men from participating in women’s sports, one thing was certain: Trump wasn’t going to get an apology. Instead, he was certain to get more self-righteous, passive-aggressive leftist posturing and cant, and now, as if on cue, Mills has delivered.
Some thought Trump’s demand for an apology was nothing more than an exercise in petulant narcissism, but it wasn’t. He asked Mills not only for “ a full throated apology,” but also for “a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the federal government again.” The Democrats are deploying highly partisan, activist judges to block Trump’s deportation of criminal migrants, and as many have noted, the principle of judicial review doesn’t actually give any judge anywhere the right to bring the executive branch to halt because he doesn’t like what it’s doing.
In the same way, if Democrat governors start defying executive orders that they dislike, the nation will gave a real insurrection on its hands, not the Viking-horn, selfie-snapping that so terrifies and obsesses the left. And so Trump wanted Mills to go on record, once Maine capitulated to his executive order, stating that she would not challenge the authority of the nation’s chief executive.
It was a reasonable demand, and one made in service of national unity, but Mills responded in character. As she has done since the beginning of this controversy, she insisted that she was actually the one who was on the side of the law: “My issue is about the rule of law, pure and simple,” she insisted. “It’s not about transgender sports; it’s about who makes the laws and who enforces the laws. I read the Constitution. The Constitution says that the president, the chief executive, shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It doesn’t allow him to make laws out of whole cloth by tweet or Instagram post or press release or executive order.”
Funny thing: Mills never uttered such an objection when Barack Obama and Old Joe Biden’s autopen were firing off executive orders. In any case, if the president issues an executive order that is unconstitutional, that’s for the supreme court to decide, not the governor of Maine.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, Mills then had the chutzpah, after making her defiant stand on the sterling principle that men must be allowed to dominate women’s sports, to pose as a champion of women’s rights. “We’ve seen policies that threaten women and girls across the country,” she declared. “If the current occupant of the White House wants to protect women and girls, he should start by protecting the women and teenage girls who are suffering miscarriages and dying because they can’t get basic, life-saving healthcare in states across the country.”
There it is. Trump doesn’t really care about women because he hasn’t backed all the measures Mills wants, so as to make sure that babies will continue to be killed in massive numbers. Sacrificing children to Moloch is all that the left thinks of as women’s rights these days, and so it’s no wonder that Mills is so blasé, at best, about mediocre male athletes becoming champion female athletes. Pretend-female athletes, that is.
Related: Maine Capitulated to Trump, But Now He Wants an Apology. Is He Going Too Far?
Mills even claimed, after defying Trump on transgender sports, that “the issue isn’t about transgender sports.” Sure, and you’re a competent governor. “People in Maine and across the country,” she claimed, “are waiting for an economic plan from the current occupant of the White House. And so far, we’ve seen none. We’ve seen tariffs and threats of tariffs that threaten our economy here in Maine and across the country.” Yeah. We’ve also seen gas prices fall and inflation is easing. Oh, and let’s remember on whose watch they went through the roof in the first place.
Janet Mills has sent a signal, but it’s not the one she meant to send. She has shown that the Democrats are going to defy Trump to the bitter end, no matter how lawful, commonsensical, and popular his policies are. Americans are getting tired of their act. And they’re going to get tireder.
