The judiciary's savage slap-down of President Trump's travel ban

Surprise, surprise: Donald Trump isn't a political mastermind, after all

President Trump has no grand plan.
(Image credit: Jim LoScalzo/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom)

Since the election of Donald Trump, many liberals have been at the edge of hysterics. President Trump's political hyper-aggressiveness, as he sits cloistered in the White House with a handful of advisers, lends itself to quasi-conspiratorial narratives about Stephen Bannon being an omnipotent puppet master, or perhaps Trump himself being an agent of Vladimir Putin.

Such narratives are strengthened by the near-unprecedented political dominance of the Republican Party, which has been taking consistent steps to turn America into a one-party state. But as demonstrated by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which on Thursday handed down a crushing defeat to Trump's travel ban, the president is not a political mastermind. On legal and policy matters, he is quite incompetent — and like the rest of his party, seriously pushing his political luck.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.