Home Speaker Mike Johnson will elevate the flags on the U.S. Capitol to full-staff for Donald Trump’s inauguration, ignoring U.S. flag code in an effort to coddle Expensive Chief.
“On January twentieth, the flags on the Capitol will fly at full-staff to have a good time our nation coming collectively behind the inauguration of our forty seventh President, Donald Trump. The flags can be lowered again to half-staff the next day to proceed honoring President Jimmy Carter,” Johnson mentioned in an announcement.
President Joe Biden ordered the flags to be flown half-staff on Dec. 29, the day Carter died on the age of 100. Biden’s order adhered to U.S. flag code, which says that after a present or former president dies, the flag ought to be lowered for 30 days—which, in Carter’s case, overlaps with Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
In fact, displaying a flag at half-staff remains to be displaying the flag. And there is precedent for having flags at half employees throughout an inauguration. The flags have been lowered throughout Richard Nixon’s inauguration in 1973, following the dying of former President Harry S. Truman.
However Trump is enraged that due to Carter’s dying, the flags could be lowered when he takes the oath of workplace.
“The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my Inauguration,” Trump whined on Reality Social on Jan. 3, incorrectly utilizing the time period “half mast,” which applies to flags on ships. “They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves. … Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Clearly, Trump is the one who was actually pissed about one thing as inconsequential because the place of the flags as he’s sworn in. And his GOP lackeys have listened to his infantile complaints and are appeasing him by ignoring custom and U.S. code.
Johnson’s determination adopted that of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who every introduced on Monday that they’ll elevate the flags the day of Trump’s inauguration. They each made the ridiculous excuse that flag code says that flags ought to be “displayed” on sure essential days, akin to Inauguration Day, though a lowered flag is, once more, nonetheless a displayed flag.
By itself, elevating a flag doesn’t have any actual adverse penalties for the American individuals. However Trump might make future calls for of Republicans that are harmful or unhealthy for the general public—as we discovered he did on a number of events throughout his first tenure. And the truth that Republicans are so desirous to appease Trump on a difficulty as minor as it is a worrying signal for a way they’ll react in these future conditions.
