Yep, Donald John Trump said today that the man killed by Minneapolis cops — whose death has spawned a national protest movement against police brutality — would be happy to see the jobs report that stunned economists and politicians.
He conflated a national tragedy with a stunning increase of 2 million jobs and a reduction in the jobless rate from 14 percent to 13 percent.
Trump said, “Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”
George Floyd is still dead. The Minneapolis cops who killed him are charged with murder in his death. The nation grieves for Floyd’s memory and is demanding fundamental change in the way many police departments handle cases involving African-Americans.
And the president of the United States seeks to suggest that Floyd would be happy at the good news suggesting an economic rebound?
Is this guy for real? Well, he is … I am disheartened to say. Donald Trump simply cannot — or will not — respond appropriately to anything.
Yes, the nation got some good news economic news today. I am cheered by the prospect of businesses filling many of the jobs that were emptied because of the coronavirus pandemic. Then we have Donald Trump making outrageous predictions about the economy storming back at record levels.
What’s more, he is seeking to turn a national tragedy into a political plus for him. Absolutely bizarre!
The Portland Press-Herald, the largest newspaper in Maine, offered a tart response to Donald J. Trump’s planned visit to the state.
“We’re sorry that you decided to come to Maine, but since you are here, could you do us a favor? Resign,” the paper said in an editorial published today.
There you have it, Mr. POTUS. The editors of the Press-Herald don’t want you to enter the state. They are fed up with your mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and with your fomenting of division and mistrust in the wake of George Floyd’s death on a Minneapolis street more than a week ago.
“You have never been a good president, but today your shortcomings are unleashing historic levels of suffering on the American people,” the editorial said.
I could not possibly agree more with what the Press-Herald has opined. It’s their call … and I am proud of them for making it.
This must be said, too. Trump won’t heed the paper’s call. He will show up and will boast and bellow about all he has done to “make America great again.” He will continue to lie. Trump will ignore reality even as it gnaws at his hopes for re-election.
As the Press-Herald noted: America needs to heal again. Please resign now, and let us begin.
Our retirement journey has been reduced, narrowed, diminished a bit. We aren’t calling a halt to our recreational vehicle travel. We’ve just been placed on a dramatically shortened leash.
Damn you, coronavirus pandemic!
We had intended to spend a good bit of our summer months tooling around several states with our fifth wheel hooked up to our pickup.
Then the pandemic arrived in all its viciousness. It forced state parks to shut down. It has shuttered businesses that cater to folks like my wife and me.
I want to stipulate that we love the home we purchased in Collin County, Texas. We enjoy spending time working in the yard, arranging storage space to make it more usable for two retired folks.
We also enjoy greatly our RV and getting out of Dodge for a spell.
Except that this summer our travel will be restricted. Neither of us wants to push our luck visiting places that might become COVID-19 “hot spots” while we’re in the area.
Our plans now as summer approaches include a number of Texas state park visits. We’ll be spending some time shortly in Atlanta, Texas, at the state park in the northeast corner of Texas. Our new home puts us in close proximity to a number of state parks.
We had sought to get into a few of them closer to the house. We couldn’t get in; it turns out a lot of other Texans have the same idea and those parks were booked to the max.
We found some space at Atlanta State Park, so off we will go.
Retirement remains a whole lot of fun. We are hoping for an end to the health crisis that has limited our time with our precious granddaughter.
It also keeps us on a short leash. The open road awaits. It’s just not as lengthy as we prefer it to be.
Presidential inaugurals often produce signature lines.
Franklin Roosevelt told us the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself”; John F. Kennedy implored the nation to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”; Gerald R. Ford — the nation’s only unelected president — told us “our long national nightmare is over.”
Donald John Trump’s signature line? “The American carnage stops right now.”
Well, dude, it hasn’t stopped. Yeah, he was referring to crime … but that hasn’t abated, either. The new “American carnage” came to us via the coronavirus pandemic. OK, he didn’t cause it. His dawdling, dithering and delay in acting initially to it has resulted in tens of thousands of more deaths than it otherwise might have produced had the president acted decisively at the front end of the pandemic.
But he didn’t.
Thus, the American carnage he vowed to stop only has worsened on his watch.
The pandemic continues to rampage across the land. It is producing greater rates of infection and death in many communities, all while the president continues to push state and local governments to speed up the reopening of the economy that has stalled because of the pandemic.
It ain’t working, Mr. President. I will just chalk this “American carnage will end” pledge to be another broken promise.
Hey, wait a second! Weren’t we worrying ourselves into a tizzy over that COVID-19 matter, the pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans each day?
It appears it took another tragedy to knock the pandemic off our front pages, off our news channels’ reporting of issues of the day, even off our own conscious thoughts. We’ve been caught up by the George Floyd tragedy in Minneapolis … as we should, given the monumental implications of the death of a black man at the hands of white cops who were brutalizing him.
I do want to turn my attention — and maybe even yours — back to the pandemic for just a brief moment.
I’ve lost count of the number of Americans who have died from the viral infection. The last figure I saw was 108,000-plus and climbing. It has slammed the brakes on the economy. The U.S. Labor Department is likely to tell us Friday that our jobless rate is now at around 20 percent. Meanwhile, we’re still getting sick at an alarming rate and we’re still dying.
So what has been Donald Trump’s focus? Get this: He is going to pull the Republican National Convention out of Charlotte, N.C. Why? Because Gov. Roy Cooper won’t guarantee that the RNC will be able to fill the arena with screaming Trumpkins cheering the nomination of their guy for a second term as president. Oh, did I mention that Cooper is a Democrat? Trump is having none of what the governor is saying, so he’s now shopping around for a more, um, friendly governor who will allow the RNC to pack an arena and expose thousands of Republican delegates and their families to potential exposure to the coronavirus.
Smart, huh? No! It’s pretty damn dumb! It is profoundly stupid! It is going to put Americans in jeopardy!
That doesn’t matter to a president who doesn’t give a rat’s a** about them or their health or their well-being. He cares only about himself, which many of us predicted would be the result of electing this carnival barker/con man/fraud/pathological liar to the nation’s highest office.
So … the pandemic continues to ravage the nation that has seen its attention diverted to another tragedy.
I just felt compelled to remind everyone that we’ve got a plate full of crises that the man who took an oath to protect us is failing to tackle in any sort of decisive fashion.
Americans have witnessed so many tragedies that we have become numb — or so it seems — to their effects.
Politicians get assassinated. Buildings are blown up. Madmen open fire in schools, churches and movie theaters. And, yes, police officers kill citizens in acts of brutality.
However, this latest tragic event — the death of George Floyd more than a week ago on a Minneapolis street — seems sadly different. This one well might stick in our national consciousness for far longer than anything else we had have witnessed.
Why is that?
I want to posit a couple of theories.
One is the physical evidence we all have seen of a cop holding Floyd to the ground, with his knee pressing against the man’s neck. We watch the cop do nothing to respond to Floyd’s pleas for help, his cries for his mother, his crying out that “I can’t breathe.” The cop, Derek Chauvin, hold him down — while the suspect is handcuffed. Floyd loses consciousness. Chauvin still doesn’t lift his knee off of Floyd’s neck.
How in the name of human decency does one explain this away? How will this former police officer tell the world why he held down a man who offered no resistance until he no longer has a pulse? You’ve seen the video, yes? He looks at the young bystander who took the video as if to say, “So what are you looking at?”
This event calls out loudly and clearly to the issue of how police treat African-American men and whether they treat them differently than they do, say, white men or white women.
The second notion that might produce the seminal moment in police-black community relations has been the reaction of police agencies around the country. We are hearing other law enforcement officials condemning the actions of Derek Chauvin. They are standing — and kneeling — with peaceful protesters in cities from coast to coast to coast in solidarity with the concerns they are raising.
So, the dialogue has commenced. Americans are demanding justice be delivered to Chauvin and the three police colleagues who watched him kill George Floyd. They also are demanding that police cease demonizing American citizens simply because of their skin color.
This outrage should last for as long as it takes for there to be tangible evidence that we are slaying this deadly beast.
What do you suppose will be Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump’s response to criticism leveled at him by a man generally viewed as one of the few bright lights of the president’s administration?
This comes from former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who said in a statement to reporters: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
Is this the ranting of a “loser”? Of a “low-IQ” rat? Or of someone who is disloyal to the president and the country he served with honor and distinction while wearing a Marine uniform?
Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who is revered by the men and women who served under his command, has spoken out eloquently and forcefully at what he has witnessed — along with the rest of us — in the conduct of the commander in chief.
Mattis has said that Trump is violating Americans’ constitutional rights by using military troops to curtail peaceful protests in the wake of the George Floyd killing by four cops in Minneapolis. The nation has erupted in indignation over the perception of widespread police brutality. Trump’s emphasis has been on ending the protests, which have become violent in many cities.
Mattis is concerned that Trump is trampling over citizens’ civil liberties.
Trump’s ham-handed response to the protests drew Mattis’s specific condemnation. As Politico reported: Mattis called the decision to clear protesters in Lafayette Square an “abuse of executive authority” and said that Americans should “reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”
Donald Trump’s response to this criticism no doubt is going to reveal the shallowness and emptiness of the president. I’ll stand with Gen. Mattis, who I consider to be a patriot and a statesman.
I want to declare myself a casualty in the ongoing “war” between friends who share opposing views of Donald John Trump.
A fellow I have known for more than 30 years has inflicted the wound. It’s not mortal. I will survive and I will proceed with the rest of my life. However, I want to share with you the pain — albeit momentary — I am feeling over the emotional injury I have suffered.
We were connected on Facebook. My longtime friend and I would “converse” on occasion via that social medium. He and I would exchange in small talk, inquire our families and refer occasionally to the good old days when we worked together.
He is a Donald Trump supporter. I … am not! He would challenge my anti-Trump tirades. I might respond. Not always, mind you, but I did on occasion.
My friend — and I’ll continue to refer to him as such — once told me that his wife couldn’t grasp how he and I could retain a friendship given our vast political differences. He said he told her that our friendship transcended politics. Wow! How cool. Right?
Well, it seems that he has had enough of our friendship. I hadn’t heard from him in some time, so I checked on the status of our Facebook relationship. I discovered that he and I were no longer “friends” on the social medium.
What the … ?
I haven’t inquired directly of him. I haven’t asked him why he “unfriended” me. I haven’t asked for an explanation. I am trying to decide what to do. Right now I am licking my wound.
I am left to ponder the effect that Donald Trump has had on friendships all over the country. Surely my example is not the only one. Others’ relationships no doubt have suffered in this Age of Trump. We are witnessing in this fractious time the impact that social media coupled with the toxic political environment fostered by Donald Trump is having on interpersonal relationships.
It looks unprecedented to my eyes. My entry into politics occurred in the early 1970s. I came home from the Army. I enrolled in college. I became politically active. I fought like hell to elect George McGovern president in 1972. It, um, didn’t work out. However, those dark days didn’t produce lasting damage to my friendships with those who opposed Sen. McGovern’s effort to become elected president.
This time it’s different. Shockingly so!
I’ll get over the injury I have suffered. Eventually. I’ll just need to redouble my effort to make sure we remove Donald Trump from the high office he never should have inherited in the first place. His presence on the political stage is dangerous to our emotional health.
He also is inflicting damage on too many friendships.
Just about the time I am ready to give up on the Republican Party, believing it has gone totally bananas, berserk and bonkers, voters in a rural western Iowa congressional district tell me there’s reason to hope for sanity within the once-great political party.
U.S. Rep. Steve King, the GOP lunatic who has been stripped of his committee assignments over his blatantly racist rhetoric, had his head handed to him Tuesday in the state’s Republican primary.
He won’t be returning to Congress next January … to which I say “hooray!”
I shouldn’t as a rule be concerned about a wacky congressman from Iowa, except that he votes on laws that affect the entire country. So when Iowa sends a nincompoop such as King to Congress, it becomes all Americans’ concern.
This is the idiot who said that he cannot understand why the term “white supremacist” has derived a negative connotation. Huh? Eh? Yep. He said it.
He also has talked about illegal immigrants hauling drugs across the border from Mexico with such frequency that they develop “thighs the size of cantaloupes.”
King has been a proud member of the Birther Brigade, questioning whether former Barack Obama — the nation’s first black president — was constitutionally qualified to run for president, alleging he was born in Kenya and not in Hawaii, the nation’s 50th state.
So, Steve King — who lost his congressional committee assignments when he made the “white supremacy” crack — is now a lame duck.
If only he could be silenced. He cannot. The Constitution grants even wackos the right to speak freely. At least, though, he soon will be stripped of his authority to enact federal law.
I admire former President George W. Bush’s restraint.
He seeks to calm the roiling water with words that appeal to our better angels. The 43rd president did so with a message released this week in the wake of George Floyd’s hideous death at the hands of brutal cops in Minneapolis.
Here is what the former president said in a statement:
“Laura and I are anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country. Yet we have resisted the urge to speak out, because this is not the time for us to lecture. It is time for us to listen. It is time for America to examine our tragic failures – and as we do, we will also see some of our redeeming strengths.
“It remains a shocking failure that many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country. It is a strength when protesters, protected by responsible law enforcement, march for a better future. This tragedy — in a long series of similar tragedies — raises a long overdue question: How do we end systemic racism in our society? The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America — or how it becomes a better place.
“America’s greatest challenge has long been to unite people of very different backgrounds into a single nation of justice and opportunity. The doctrine and habits of racial superiority, which once nearly split our country, still threaten our Union. The answers to American problems are found by living up to American ideals — to the fundamental truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by God with certain rights. We have often underestimated how radical that quest really is, and how our cherished principles challenge systems of intended or assumed injustice. The heroes of America — from Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr. — are heroes of unity. Their calling has never been for the fainthearted. They often revealed the nation’s disturbing bigotry and exploitation — stains on our character sometimes difficult for the American majority to examine. We can only see the reality of America’s need by seeing it through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised.
“That is exactly where we now stand. Many doubt the justice of our country, and with good reason. Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions. We know that lasting justice will only come by peaceful means. Looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress. But we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.
“This will require a consistent, courageous, and creative effort. We serve our neighbors best when we try to understand their experience. We love our neighbors as ourselves when we treat them as equals, in both protection and compassion. There is a better way — the way of empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice. I am confident that together, Americans will choose the better way.”
All of this, to no one’s surprise, will be lost on the current president, who foments anger with his tough talk about “thousands and thousands of well-armed military” taking control of our city streets. Donald Trump likely will not even read this statement in its entirety.
