Jeb Bush nailed Donald Trump on eminent domain on Saturday night, albeit in his usual inarticulate way. In response, Trump shushed him, perhaps because Jeb was getting a little too close to exposing the establishment crony capitalist that Trump is being revealed as.
After recalling that Trump had,in a previous interview, said that he loved eminent domain, one of the moderators at the debate asked Trump if that policy would be appropriate to use for a hydroelectric power line called the Northern Pass.
Initially, Trump didn’t answer the question, but rather claimed that eminent domain was an “absolute necessity” for a country, because without it we wouldn’t have any infrastructure. He then disparaged conservatives for being for the Keystone Pipeline but against eminent domain, and argued that the pipeline wouldn’t “go 10 feet” without the policy. Trump followed up and said that people are given a fortune for their property when bought out through the condemnation procedures of eminent domain.
Right after that, Jeb Bush jumped in and said that the Donald didn’t understand the difference between eminent domain for public use and eminent domain for private business. He recalled the fact that Donald Trump attempted take an elderly lady’s home so that he could expand his own private business. Of course, that’s when Trump attacked Jeb personally, smacking him for trying to be a “tough guy” and shushing him. But Trump stayed with the Keystone Pipeline case, asserting that it was a private job—just like his limousine parking lot, so it’s basically the same thing. After a back and forth between what these two men think is the right designation for the Keystone Pipeline, Trump said the following:
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The big deal here is sovereignty. If Trump/GM can use government to transfer your property to their own holdings, there is essentially no protection for private property rights. In that scenario, you are no longer sovereign with things that you own, but a serf who can be ejected at will from wherever you put down roots.
In the view of Donald Trump, “the greater good” overrules individual freedom. His eminent domain stance is far outside the realm of the republican form of government, the guiding philosophy of the United States of America, which emphasizes limited government, private property rights and self-governance. But in order to muddy the waters about what Trump actually believes, he threw up the Keystone Pipeline as if it is the same thing. In his muddled, inarticulate way, Jeb Bush was right.
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