Every night on the cable news channels, I see Democratic congresscritters who tell me that the president* is an unprecedented existential threat to the institutions of the free American republic. In general, I agree with them, although I think they do a minor insult to the memories of Woodrow Wilson and A. Mitchell Palmer. Thus, I am a bit confused as to why 50 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted on Thursday to bequeath to the president* and to his national security apparatus, and his dubiously credentialed attorney general, massive surveillance powers in this country.

I am especially puzzled because, for a brief period of time, as The Washington Post explains, the president* seemed to be opposed to his own bill.

The measure would extend for six years the government’s ability to collect from U.S. companies the emails and other communications of foreign targets located outside the United States. The intelligence community considers the program, called Section 702 after the part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 that established it, its key national security surveillance tool. But the fate of the program appeared to be in jeopardy Thursday morning, after the president tweeted his doubts about it, questioning his administration’s position after seeing a segment about it on Fox News Channel. “ ‘House votes on controversial FISA ACT today,’ ” Trump wrote, citing a Fox News headline. “This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?”

Here’s the meta political concern of all time: should any president, but especially this one, be granted such broad surveillance powers if the Three Dolts on a Divan in the morning can confuse him so badly on the subject? Can we trust a president* with this authority if he can be talked out of supporting it by Steve Doocy? Are we all turning into lower amphibians? Questions abound.

Anyway, some Democrats jumped in and tried in vain to get the bill pulled so that somebody had time to break out the flash cards and Crayolas to explain to the president* why he should support his own measure.

But top Democrats seized on the confusion, calling on Republican leaders to withdraw the bill from consideration “in light of the irresponsible and inherently contradictory messages coming out of the White House today,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on the floor. Republicans seemed undeterred by Democrats’ demands, plowing ahead with planned votes on the bill and a sole amendment to it Thursday morning. But the president’s mixed messages sent shock waves through the House GOP, which was gathered for a regular conference meeting when he sent his initial tweets.

But here comes the real befuddlement. Liberal Democrats and some libertarian-minded Republicans got behind an amendment by Congressman Justin Amash that would have added a warrant requirement to the so-called “702 searches.” Named after Section 702 of the FISA Act, these searches provided a loophole the size of the Hellespont that would allow backdoor searches of domestic electronic communications—something that, say, the FBI would love to do in cases having nothing to do with foreign intelligence. The House voted on the amendment before voting on the actual bill.

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The amendment failed, a result helped immeasurably by the fact that 55 Democrats voted against it. These included Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. Also voting against were reliable Democratic cable news Cassandras Eric Swalwell and, most spectacularly, Adam Schiff, who earlier in the day was thoroughly convinced that the president* was incapable of understanding the ramifications of his own law.

There is within the government now a sort of sub rosa effort to see how much of the executive power safely can be leached away from a president* and an administration* so clearly unable to handle much more than a takeout order. Today, for example, some veterans of the United States missile command wrote an open letter to Congress asking it to curtail some of the president*’s power over the country’s nuclear arsenal. From globalzero.com:

“We cannot stand idly by as Donald Trump holds us all hostage to his petulant mood swings,” said Dr. Bruce Blair, a veteran nuclear launch officer and co-founder of the Global Zero movement to eliminate nuclear weapons. “Donald Trump is the last person who should possess the nuclear codes and the power to start a nuclear conflagration. Our weapons have the power to destroy entire nations, including our own nation if he initiates a nuclear war. As a former steward of the nuclear launch keys, I’ve learned about the stability, competence and temperament it takes to hold such a responsibility, and Donald Trump has shown us all he possesses none of those qualities.”

Back before he was replaced with the customary replicant, Senator Bob Corker also had qualms about this president*’s ability to bring down Armageddon on a fractious whim. From The Washington Post:

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has said Trump’s threats to global rivals could put the country “on the path to World War III,” began Tuesday’s session warning of the inherent danger in a system where the president has “sole authority” to give launch orders there are “no way to revoke.” By the time Corker emerged from the hearing — the first to address the president’s nuclear authority in over four decades — he was at a loss for what to do next. “I do not see a legislative solution today,” Corker told reporters. “That doesn’t mean, over the course of the next several months, one might not develop, but I don’t see it today.”

If serious people are talking seriously about reining in the president*’s war powers so that we all don’t perish in a tweet-induced lake of fire, I say amen to that. But, in that case, why wouldn’t you also want to make sure he can’t run wild with the intelligence apparatus, too? If this presidency* truly is a unique threat to democratic institutions, then why not do everything you can do to provide unique precautions before the country elects Brian Kilmeade?

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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