Category Archives: Donald Trump

What would Mom and Dad think?

My late parents departed this Earth long before Donald J. Trump burst onto the nation’s political scene.

Dad was gone in 1980; Mom died four years later. Neither of them had the displeasure of suffering from the whims and machinations of this truly bizarre individual. Still, I think about them every day even without having to attach their names to what they might be thinking about what the current president is doing to our economy and to our standing in the world.

I’ll be candid on assessing their analytical skills. Dad wasn’t much of a critical thinker. He relied on his gut. A side of me actually thinks he might have been impressed by Trump’s phony bravado. Dad was a proud World War II veteran, though, and my hope is that he would be repulsed by Trump’s blatant disrespect for those of us who did don the uniform of our country.

Mom, however, was a much deeper thinker than Dad. I will presume that she would be aghast at Trump’s homophobia, his racism, lack of empathy and compassion, his boasting of business skills when he’s run every endeavor he’s ever touched into the ground.

Therefore, on these matters, I am much more my mother’s son than I am a part of Dad.

They’re no longer around and I shudder to think how they would respond to what is unfolding during this second Donald Trump turn as POTUS.

I shudder, indeed, at how Dad might be cheering the charlatan on as he lies through his teeth. More importantly, though, I shudder at how Mom would respond to this individual’s overall unfitness for the nation’s highest and most honored public office.

 

Yes, I want POTUS to succeed

Believe this or disbelieve it, but I want to clear the air on an issue that needs clearing.

It is the future of the presidency under the regime led by Donald J. Trump. In short, i actually want Trump to succeed. I don’t wish him success because he deserves high praise; he seeks it out even when he doesn’t deserve it.

I want the country to reap the benefit of whatever success Trump can bring forth.

I consider myself to be an American patriot, not a phony patriot who believes the lies that pour out of Trump’s mouth. I ain’t a MAGA American, as I believe the nation has retained its greatness even during the most difficult times imaginable.

What do I believe will happen with some of Trump’s policies? I believe the tariff tantrum he’s on only will worsen our daily lives by driving up the cost of damn near everything we consume. His deportation policy is heartless and inhumane. Trump’s meddling in higher education only weakens universities’ traditional independence.

The guy is a classic RINO, calling himself a “conservative” while unleashing the government to punish his political foes … to whom he refers as enemies.

I am a fair-minded fellow, regardless of what some critics of this blog might believe. I want Trump to succeed because continued failure only means more rough days ahead for the rest of us.

OK, maybe I’m self-serving in wishing the best for Trump’s policies. If he succeeds, we’ll all reap the reward.

Move over, President W.H. Harrison

I long have held the late President William Henry Harrison up as the model for setting the dubious record for making stupid presidential decisions.

Donald Trump is challenging President Harrison for that title.

Harrison’s stupidity manifested itself on inauguration day, March 3, 1841. It was bitterly cold in Washington, D.C. Harrison’s medical team warned him to bundle up before delivering his inaugural speech. He ignored the medical advice and stood in the cold rain for well past an hour droning on about whatever was the issue of the day.

He then caught pneumonia and was bed-ridden until April 4. That’s when he died. They swore in VP John Tyler.

Profoundly stupid on the president’s part, correct? Yes. It was.

Trump has been told by Nobel laureate economists on the left and the right that the tariffs he has imposed will be catastrophic. They will punish Americans who will pay exhorbitantly high prices for goods and commodities imported from abroad. They will do little harm that Trump intends to inflict on the exporting nations.

But … he imposed the tariffs anyway. He has put millions of Americans’ livelihood in potentially dire peril. He launched without apparent provocation and international trade war that includes some of our strongest, most reliable and faithful allies and trading partners. Such as Canada, Mexico, France, Australia and Japan.

Yes, the dumbass in chief has decided to declare economic war on the entire planet apparently believing he is going to strengthen our hand in the world market.

Well, President Harrison’s stupidity had an obvious negative impact on his personal health and well-being. Donald Trump’s stupidity will reverberate all across Planet Earth.

Step aside, W.H. Harrison. You have company in the pantheon of pitiful presidents.

Buyer’s remorse: It’s real!

Well, gang …. perhaps you have heard some chatter about Donald Trump voters feeling “buyer’s remorse” over casting votes for Trump.

I am going to tell you that the remorse is real. I met a Trumpkin this week who expressed it to me, to my face, out loud and in a public place.

My friend told me she supported many of Trump’s policies during the 2016 presidential campaign. So, she voted for him. Then came the 2020 election and, believing his term in office was a success, she vote for him again for re-election.

Then the 2024 campaign commenced and there he was … again! And once more, Trump got my friend’s vote.

Then he ran off the rails, flew into the ditch and has been flailing ever since. His myriad pronoucements about the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada becoming a U.S. state and a host of other bizarre statements and decisions have pushed this supporter aside.

“He has gone way too far,” she said this week, pressing her hand to her forehead.

Yeah. Do ya think?

She is a Texas native. She has witnessed the state’s transformation from a “yellow dog Democratic” state to a rock-ribbed Republican fortress. With Trump at the helm of the GOP, I am absolutely certain she is not alone in feeling remorse over what this idiot is doing to the country we all love.

How did we regress this far?

I will go to my grave never understanding how this nation has regressed as far as it has with the election of someone who is so fundamentally flawed as the man who is about to become the 47th president of the United States of America.

I can recall an earlier era in this nation when Republicans across the land were so livid at the election of a young governor from Arkansas. Bill Clinton was believed to be a serial cheater, a womanizer who violated the oath he took to his wife. They published defamatory videos about him, accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of killing a trusted aide who, in fact, took his own life.

Bill Clinton got elected president in 1992, but the hunt for impeachable dirt on him never let up. Finally, during a probe into a real estate matter, a special prosecutor found evidence of a relationship that existed between the president and a young White House intern. The prosecutor summoned a grand jury, which then asked the president about the affair. Clinton had taken the oath to tell the truth and then lied to the grand jury.

Aha! Republicans then had their impeachable offense: perjury before a duly sworn grand jury!

Good grief. Clinton lied about an affair and got impeached for it. He would be acquitted in a Senate trial.

Two decades later, we have a man in the White House who has admitted to marital infidelity but then sought political favors from a foreign head of state and then, after losing the 2020 election, incited an insurrection against the government as Congress was preparing to certify his election loss to Joe Biden. He went through two impeachment trials … but survived them both.

Republicans shrugged. No problem with any of that. He was convicted of 34 crimes involving the payment of money to a porn actress to be quiet about a tumble the two of them took in 2006.

We have entered a dark era where character no longer matters. We used to seek the very best among us to lead us. We have turned instead to giving a pass to someone who embodies he worst among us.

I never can accept what we are about to experience once again.

Trump’s angry because of this? What … ?

Donald Trump has expressed displeasure over the nation’s salute to one of his predecessors at the time of a presidential inauguration.

Small-mindedness has hit a new low.

President Biden ordered all flags to fly at half-staff for 30 days to honor the late President Jimmy Carter. Trump will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, while the flags will still be flying at half-staff. Trump thinks that disrespects his return to the presidency.

Give me a break … man!

Carter died near the end of the year just passed. President Joe Biden’s order was totally proper and in keeping with longstanding national tradition. Of course, Trump doesn’t respect any tradition that he deems diminishes his own role, which this one does not!

For the incoming president to bitch about flags flying in honor of a great statesman only sullies Trump’s already rotten reputation.

Trump gets a bouquet … yes, believe it!

Get ready for a shocker, ladies and gents, as I am about to offer a good word for the next president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump said this week he plans to attend the funeral of the late President Jimmy Carter.

OK, it’s not a huge deal. Trump should be there. He says he will go. What’s remarkable is that he said so quietly, in a statement. He made no big splash, no grand proclamation calling attention to himself.

I am going to presume he’ll join the other men who have held the presidency: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The incumbent president, Joe Biden, will deliver the keynote eulogy honoring his predecessor, with whom he forged a remarkable friendship dating back to when Biden first entered the U.S. Senate in 1973.

In what has to be the most moving element of the funeral will occur when the sons of two high-profile politicians deliver memorials on behalf of their fathers. Ted Mondale, son of former Vice President Walter Mondale, will read his late father’s eulogy he wrote years ago. Steve Ford, son of the late former President Gerald Ford, will do the same.

Walter Mondale and Gerald Ford expected Carter to precede them in death. He outlived them both, but they wrote the eulogies in case he did.

I won’t be fixated on Donald Trump’s presence among the attendees. I am, however, glad to see him take a moment to honor a good, decent and most honorable man as the nation and the world bid him a fond farewell.

Do not disbelieve Trump’s warnings

Donald Trump’s pathological lying makes it impossible for me to believe virtually nothing that flies out of his yapper.

Except for one thing.

That would be the warnings he has issued about what he intends to do when he becomes president of the United States of America.

When he has said he lost “many friends” on 9/11, we learned he attended zero funerals for his friends after that tragedy. He boasts about his “landslide” victory in 2016 when in fact he lost the popular vote and was elected solely on the basis of the Electoral College. He inflates his net worth, his intelligence and says he hires only “the best people”; all lies.

But he says he will toss the Constitution aside on his first day in office and will govern “like a dictator” for one day. That kind of boast … I believe.

He has said he intends to pardon many of the Jan. 6 traitors imprisoned after being convicted of seeking to overturn the 2020 election. He vows to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” with Ukraine. He intends to “drill baby, drill” even though we’re now producing more petroleum than ever in our history.

Trump will take office with plenty of executive authority at his disposal. He says his 2024 victory gave him a “mandate” to use that power. Well, it did nothing of the sort. His victory was narrow. He will deploy that authority immediately upon taking office, or so he has vowed.

I will take him at his word on that, but on nothing else.

Trump fills out clown show cast

Donald J. Trump continues to fill out his cast of Cabinet-level goofballs, fruitcakes and assorted loyalists … just as he promised he would prior to the 2024 presidential election.

The latest cast member to sign on is Linda McMahon, the former exec with the World Wrestling and Entertainment outfit run by her husband, Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon has been nominated to be our nation’s education secretary.

Her education credentials? The silence you hear is evidence that she doesn’t have anything in her background. No administration experience. Nothing, man!

But … she is a Trump loyalist along with attorney general nominee and one-time DOJ investigative target Matt Gaetz, Fox News blowhard and defense nominee Pete Hegseth, Kennedy political scion and anti-vaxxer health and human services boss RFK Jr., and Russian agent and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard.

I mean, good grief! What the hell is the POTUS-elect seeking to do here?

The only good news I can find is that there appear to be enough Republican senators who are finding their long-squishy backbone to block many of the nuttiest of the nut jobs Trump has gathered around him.

Mika and Joe make nice with Trump?

Someone will have to explain to me why the liberal establishment has its shorts in a wad over an interview that two MSNBC hosts had with the next president of the United States.

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, co-hosts of “Morning Joe,” went to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald Trump. They said they remain opposed fundamentally to what he intends to do when he becomes president. They said they want to “restart” the dialogue they once had with the future POTUS.

Someone please explain to me why that is a big … deal among those who continue to loathe the future president. You may count me as a “never Trumper” who wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were the last man standing. However, if I was a practicing daily journalist, I would really embrace the chance to talk frankly with him, trying to pin him down on what he intends to do in office.

Brzezinski and Scarborough are real-life wife and husband. I am utterly certain they talked through many nights trying to decide whether this was the right call, given the angry rhetoric they exchanged with Trump in recent years.

Who knows? This effort to restart communication between them and the next POTUS might backfire. If it does, then the critics can bellow “We told you so!” If not, then they are able to do their jobs as journalists and try to plum what passes for a brain in the skull of the next president.