"Apophasis" is a favorite Greek term of James Taranto, the great Wall Street Journal opinion editor. It's a rhetorical device by which someone sneakily raises a subject by saying they will not mention it.
CNN host Audie Cornish gave a perfect illustration of the term on today's CNN This Morning. In a discussion of the Trump administration's deportation of Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members, which some claim violated a judge's order, Cornish said:
"This is one of those things that people end up talking about constitutional crisis. I will try not to kickoff Monday with that term, but . . . "
Nicely played, Audie! And by the same token, we're not going to raise the issue of your blatant liberal bias, despite the abundant evidence thereof!
At the end of the segment, Lourdes "Lulu" Garcia-Navarro, formerly an NPR host, now of the New York Times, complained, "We don't know that these are Venezuelan gang members," who are being deported. Just like they claim you can't know the pro-Hamas protesters are pro-Hamas, like we can't read placards and pamphlets.
Is that the hill that the Democrats and the liberal media want to fight on -- that the Trump administration is being too tough in deporting vicious gang members illegally in the United States? Make Donald's day!
As for Cornish's stealthy suggestion that the deportations have created a constitutional crisis, CNN contributor Alex Thompson mentioned that Trump's advisers "spent the last four years when they were not in power studying every single obscure statute . . . They are going line by line to try to justify all these things." And "they want this to go all the way to the Supreme Court."
Meticulously studying and applying laws on the books "line-by-line," and wanting the Supreme Court to ultimately rule on the issues, sounds like the diametrical opposite of fomenting a constitutional crisis!
Amusingly, when Thompson mentioned that the Trump administration defended its actions by citing a law from the 1700s signed by President John Adams, Garcia-Navarro whined, "This is the problem with having old laws on the books."
Wait a second. CNN and its media allies thought the Logan Act of 1799 was worth exploring against the Trump team in 2017. Weren't libs like Lulu the same people who were outraged by the overturning of Roe v. Wade because it had been on the books for almost 50 years?
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
3/17/25
6:01 am EDTAUDIE CORNISH: Good morning, everyone. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you so much for waking up with us.
We're going to talk today about the showdown between the president and the courts. Is the White House ignoring a judge's ruling?
DONALD TRUMP: That was a bad group of, as I say, hombres. They invaded our country. So this isn't, in that sense, this is war. In many respects, it's more dangerous than war because, you know, in war, they have uniforms. You know who you're shooting at. You know who you're going after. These are people that came out, they're walking down the streets.
CORNISH: That's President Trump, of course, defending a flight which sent hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. In a made-for-TV moment, they were unloaded under heavy guard and taken to the country's notorious super prison.
The problem? A federal judge had actually issued a restraining order and instructed the Trump administration to turn around any flights that had already left. That didn't happen.
In a statement, the White House claimed the judge's ruling, quote, had no lawful basis. Secretary of State Marco Rubio even shared a post from El Salvador's president saying, oopsie, too late.
. . .
ALEX THOMPSON: Yesterday, my colleague Marc Caputo, basically reported that after the judge's order, they, Stephen Miller, basically went and said, like, is there a way we can potentially challenge this? And that's why they essentially ignored it, and just let the flight go on, because they want this. And they said, you know, a senior White House official told my colleague Marc Caputo that they want this to go all the way to the Supreme Court. The fact that they are defying or ignoring these challenges is intentional. They want these things to ascend up to the Supreme Court.
CORNISH: And this is one of those things that people end up talking about constitutional crisis. I will try not to kick off Monday with that term. But I want to play for you the White House press secretary and how she talks about the judiciary.
KAROLINE LEAVITT: Clearly, there are left-wing activists, who sit behind a bench in a courthouse, who don't like this president and his policies. But the fact is, everything President Trump is doing is within his executive authority to do it. He is acting within the bounds of the law. All of his actions are constitutional. And our White House and the entire administration are prepared to fight back against this resistance.
. . .
THOMPSON: You know, they spent the last four years when they were not in power studying every single obscure statute, I mean, it's not a --
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is the problem with having old laws on the books, let me also just say.
THOMPSON: I mean, over the weekend, they used a law from the 1700s that John Adams signed. They also, in order to try to deport the pro-Palestinian campus protester, they're using an obscure statute that's never really been used in this way that requires the Secretary of State himself to intervene. They are going line by line to try to justify all these things.
. . .
DOUG HEYE: But Donald Trump's trying to set up a conversation here. Are we going to talk about the doctor who was unjustly removed from the country, or are we going to talk about Venezuelan gangs? He wants us to focus on the latter, and he wins on that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But we don't know that these are Venezuelan gang members, and I think that is the point. No, no, because you've seen --
HEYE: But you're inserting logic and facts where they don't necessarily exist, right?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, well, I'm not... Well, but... Okay.
HEYE: But that's what Donald Trump wants the conversation to be.
