A judge in China’s top court has labeled US President Donald Trump an enemy “of the rule of law” over his insults directed at a US judge who temporarily blocked the president’s travel ban, adding that Trump had set a poor example as head of the world’s leading democracy.
Chinese Supreme People’s Court Judge He Fan’s (何帆) blog post came after Trump on Saturday on Twitter called US District Judge James Robart a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” decision opened the country to potential terror attacks.
In his post, dated on Sunday, He wrote that under the US system’s separation of powers, a president who is dealt a judicial defeat should bear the loss silently rather than lash out at the judge in question.
Photo: Greg Lehman/Whitman College via AP
The widely reported controversy surrounding Trump’s ban follows recent remarks by China’s top judge that the concept of judicial independence was an “erroneous Western ideal” unsuited to China — seen as a demand for obedience from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders.
Those comments have reignited a debate on the topic within China’s legal community, which is in general tightly bound to uphold the party line.
He, an expert on the US justice system, did not voice his thoughts in that debate, although he frequently offers opinions on matters foreign and domestic.
He published a lengthy and widely read paean to former US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia after his death last year.
He said Trump had set a poor example and lost respect for having “led the way in insulting a judge, with the vice president and his political party swarming to his defense [and] in a country known as the most democratic and most respectful of the rule of law.”
“The president who would curse a judge and the thug who would kill a judge are both public enemies of the rule of law,” He wrote, referencing the recent murder of a retired judge in southern China.
“Who cares that you control the armed forces and have nuclear weapons at your disposal. Your dignity has been swept away and you are no different than a scoundrel,” He wrote.
Trump had been considered by many in China as preferable to Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was seen as taking a harder line toward Beijing. However, Trump has also raised concerns over his comments on Taiwan, trade and other issues seen as diverging from long-established US policy toward China.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS