Former U.S President Barack Obama had promised to speak out when he found “core values” at stake, and he did on Monday. Mr. Obama is “heartened” by the popular mobilisation “when American values are at stake," his spokesperson said, on a day when President Donald Trump and his advisers connected his predecessor and his advisers to a series of White House decisions in the recent days, leading to multiple tiffs between the camps.
Capping the day, Mr. Trump removed the U.S acting attorney general appointed by Mr. Obama after she instructed government law officers to not defend the Presidential order that put restrictions on people from seven Muslim-majority countries traveling into the country. In the opening salvo on Tuesday morning – at 6.22 am - the President tweeted: “Nancy Pelosi and Fake Tears Chuck Schumer held a rally at the steps of The Supreme Court and mic did not work (a mess)-just like Dem party!” The mike had malfunctioned at the Democratic protest meet on Monday night and Mr. Schumer had broken down on Sunday, talking about the travel ban.
“Now have an Obama A.G,” Mr. Trump tweeted before he replaced Sally Yates as the acting AG. “The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. They have nothing going but to obstruct,” after Ms. Yates sent out her instructions to government lawyers. “For as long as I am the acting attorney general, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defence of the executive order,” she wrote.
She “has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” a White House statement issued on Monday night said. “Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration,” the statement said hours after Mr. Obama waded into the controversy, supporting protestors and questioning his successor.
Mr. Trump had characterised his sweeping travel ban that triggered global outrage, domestic protest and legal challenge as continuation of Mr. Obama’s policy. The former President’s spokesperson refuted this suggestion. "With regard to comparisons to President Obama's foreign policy decisions, as we've heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.”
"Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake," he added.
Meanwhile, the White House challenged career foreign service officers to quit if they did not agree with the President’s travel ban and other policies, even as dozens of them are gathering signatures for a dissent note. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said: “These career bureaucrats have a problem with it? They should either get with the program or they can go.”
Sparking off another confrontation with the Obama team the White House claimed there was nothing unprecedented in chief strategist Steve Bannon attending the Principals Committee meeting of the National Security Council, as an adviser to the former President too used to do it.
David Axelrod, the adviser in question refuted the claim. "As a senior adviser to President Obama in 2009, I had the opportunity to witness the fateful deliberations of his National Security Council Principals committee over the strategy the U.S would pursue in the war with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan…..In elevating Bannon to sit with the Secretaries of Defense and State and other key national security figures on the NSC principals committee, President Trump has blazed new ground. Bannon will exercise authority no political adviser has had before.
