Category Archives: Donald Trump

Trump far from in the clear

Two top prosecutors from the Manhattan (N.Y.) district attorney’s office have quit, reportedly throwing a criminal investigation into Donald J. Trump into some state of disarray. The chatter suggests the new DA has choked on deciding whether to indict Donald for any sort of allegation associated with a longstanding criminal probe into his business dealings.

Does this mean Trump is home free? That he has nothing about which to worry? Oh, no. Far from it.

DA Alvin Bragg reportedly has balked on proceeding with indicting Donald. Two of his top legal eagles quit simultaneously, suggesting to many observers that there’s a major disagreement within the DA’s office on how to proceed.

But let’s hold on for a minute. This is one investigation. Do I want it to end now? No! As an ardent critic of Donald Trump, my preference would be for the DA who took over from a veteran prosecutor — Cyrus Vance Jr. — to follow the evidence and the law all the way to the end.

However, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, is still working on our own investigation into Trump’s alleged business chicanery. Let us also remember that the Trump Organization already is has been indicted on charges of tax fraud and other matters.

Oh, and then we have yet another criminal investigation down yonder in Fulton County, Ga., where DA Fani Willis is examining whether to prosecute Donald on a charge of interfering in a state election process. Donald did demand that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” enough votes to swing the state from Joe Biden’s column to Donald Trump.

Finally, there’s the House select committee examining Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection on 1/6. We now hear of possible cooperation with the committee from key Donald Trump acolytes, such as Rudolph Giuliani and — get a load of this! — Ivanka Trump, the elder daughter of Donald. The Justice Department already has indicted one key Trump aide, Steve Bannon, on a charge of contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena.

This is all my way of suggesting that the resignations of the DA’s office prosecutor might not be as big a deal as many are making of it. The quitters might have stalled the progress of that probe by virtue of their resignation. It isn’t the end of Donald Trump’s troubles. Not by a very long shot!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

How did this guy get elected?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

As I watch the congressional probe into 1/6 trudge along — hopefully to a constructive conclusion — and then listen to the focus of that probe, the 45th POTUS, I have come to an inescapable finding.

It is that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of political wisdom did Donald J. Trump ever get elected president of the United States in first place. And how in the name of all that is sane and rational did this guy ever avoid getting tossed out of office on his oversized backside after the House of Reps impeached him twice?

He preaches The Big Lie about the 2020 election. His cult followers cheer him on. Trump teases them with hints about possibly running again in 2024 in an astonishing bid to get elected a second time to an office he had no business at all ever occupying even one time.

I read this idiot’s comments, given that I prefer to read them than listen to the sound of his voice. I then wonder: What the hell is this guy saying?

The list of treachery, transgressions and outright treason are too numerous to check off here. You know what they are, what they entail, and you know of the damage they have done individually and collectively to our cherished system of representative democracy.

Trump’s election in 2016 is a case study of a politician benefiting from astonishing luck. The popular phrase du jour of that election cycle was that Trump managed to draw “an inside straight,” while winning the Electoral College and losing the actual vote by 3 million ballots to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have read many accounts over the years since that fluke victory that Trump never believed he would win. When he did win, he was caught flat-footed, with no clue on how to form a government, let alone actually know how to govern.

Four years later, he got drummed out of office by a seasoned politician. He never accepted Joe Biden’s victory and skulked out of Washington the day before President Biden’s inaugural.

The 1/6 committee continues to gather information and sworn testimony from those who witnessed the disgraced ex-POTUS on the day of the traitorous riot on 1/6. We’re getting bits of info here and there about revelations on fake electors seeking to overturn the legitimate election results; about Trump sitting in the White House residence cheering on the rioting traitors; about the ex-POTUS considering blanket pardons for all the scoundrels who pooped on Capitol floors while shouting out their desire to find and “hang” VP Mike Pence.

There is much more to chronicle. I’ll leave it to you to piece together all that you have seen and heard from this moron.

I always have expected us to elect the best among us to public office. To think that one of the very worst among us managed to blunder and bumble his way into the White House simply defies my ability to explain it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

No one is above the law? We’ll see

It has become cliche to declare that “no one is above the law,” that every American citizen must face the same potential punishment for crimes committed, no matter their standing as public officials or as former public officials.

Well, I think we’ll have to see how that plays out as it involves Donald John Trump.

The ex-president of the United States is facing a boatload of allegations that could be proven true. To be fair, those allegations also could wither and die.

Trump occupies a unique place in our nation’s roster of former elected officials. He’s either revered or reviled. Count me among the latter group of Americans. That is my way of suggesting that I hope the “no one is above the law” cliche plays out properly, that not even Donald Trump could avoid time behind bars if the allegations against prove true.

He faces possible indictment in Georgia for trying to coerce a statewide elections official to “find” enough votes to allow him to win that state’s electoral votes in 2020; he lost the state to Joe Biden. A congressional select committee has summoned dozens of Trump aides to testify before the panel about what Trump did on 1/6 when he incited the traitorous mob to storm Capitol Hill. A New York City district attorney has indicted Trump’s company on allegations of fraud; we will get to see whether the Boss — Trump himself — was a party to allegations of inflating his wealth to obtain loans.

I hasten to add that if your run-of-the-mill rich guy is convicted of any combination of these crimes, he would be fitted with a prison jump suit and sent to the slammer. If Donald Trump gets convicted of any of these allegations, do you believe he will go to jail, or to prison? My heart tells me Trump should be sent to the lockup. My head suggests that Trump — if a jury declares him guilty of any of the crimes for which he could be charged — is going to skate free of any time behind bars.

No one is above the law? We might get to see whether that’s true … or just a tired cliche.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

‘Worse than Watergate’

Carl Bernstein knows an existential threat to American democracy when he sees it, given that he had a front-row seat at one of the worst threats ever imagined, the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.

However, he said that the Donald Trump unraveling is worse than Watergate because this crisis lacks something that Watergate contained: heroes among Republicans who told the president, Richard Nixon, that he couldn’t survive an impeachment and a Senate trial. Thus, Nixon quit the office and headed off into the sunset of oblivion.

Donald Trump isn’t facing that kind of threat from within his party, the same party of Richard Nixon.

Carl Bernstein Says Trump Investigation is “Far Worse Than Watergate” | The View – YouTube

Bernstein and his Washington Post colleague Robert Woodward covered the Watergate scandal as it unfolded in late 1972, into 1973 and ended with President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Bernstein and Woodward became journalism legends and their work stands forever as the definition of investigative reporting.

I have to agree with Bernstein, that Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law, on our democratic process, on the nation’s cherished electoral system presents a greater threat to the nation than a “third-rate burglary” that devolved into a coverup and an abuse of presidential power that drove a president from the pinnacle of power.

We need answers to the 1/6 insurrection and we need to take measures to prevent a tragic recurrence.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What is Trump’s legacy?

REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

Donald J. Trump’s presidential legacy is being written at this moment and from my standpoint — as if it’s a big surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly — it will contain many more negatives than positive achievements.

It will start with two impeachments and two Senate trials. He skated clear of conviction both times, although for reasons that had more to do with the cult following he built in Congress than the merits of the articles of impeachment brought against him.

It will wind its way through the alleged corruption that congressional investigators are uncovering as they pore through evidence related to the 1/6 insurrection.

It will contain plenty of mention of the myriad lies that poured forth from Trump, including the lie about the pandemic’s initial seriousness and how Trump withheld that knowledge from a public that needed to know what it faced.

The legacy will include the insurrection, the riot on Capitol Hill by the mob of traitors who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. Accordingly, it also will include Trump being the only president in history to refuse to concede an election that he lost fairly and legally.

I have said more times than I can remember that Trump never should have been elected president in the first place. He won the 2016 election in the most astounding political fluke in American history.

The end of the 1/6 probe by the House select committee is getting closer to its conclusion. The panel does not have a lot of time left to finish its work. It is working with breathtaking speed in its search for the why, the how and the consequence of that hideous assault on our democracy. It will offer solutions to preventing it from recurring.

It’s going to have Donald Trump’s grimy fingerprints all over it … and that, I dare say, is going to be where the ex-president’s legacy will be engraved forever.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Trump flushes records? Hah!

I cannot stop shaking my head over reports that Donald J. Trump, in an effort to keep the public’s prying eyes off his presidential records, flushed many of the documents down a White House toilet.

Of all the baloney associated with the former Dips**t in Chief, this one kinda/sorta takes the proverbial cake.

It’s not only illegal for him to have (allegedly) flushed these papers down the crapper, it speaks to a sort of ignorance that the rest of us have known since we were old enough to know damn near anything. It is that you don’t flush anything other than toilet tissue down a toilet … for criminy sakes!

The Presidential Records Act requires those who serve as president to keep all official records for storage in the National Archives. It’s part of our national history that these individuals must preserve for historians to pore through. Donald Trump broke the law! He should be punished not only for breaking it, but also for being a total dumbass.

Do you think The Donald was trying to hide something?

Huh … do ya?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ex-POTUS shows his profound stupidity

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Donald J. Trump’s ability to demonstrate his abject stupidity has become the stuff of political legend, or at least the stuff of tittering and gossip.

Mike Pence, who served as vice president in the Trump administration, has said the former Insurrectionist in Chief was “wrong” to suggest that the VP had the authority to “overturn” a duly constituted election. What was Trump’s response? He decided to hurl epithets not only at Trump, but also at “Old Crow Mitch McConnell,” whatever the hell that means.

You see, all Pence did in his talk to the Federalist Society the other day was to declare that the law is clear, that the vice president had zero authority to do what Trump demanded of him, which was to reject electoral votes cast for Joe Biden and award them to Trump.

Pence said he couldn’t do that. So … Donald, for cryin’ out loud, you need to stop fomenting The Big Lie about phony vote fraud. I know he won’t stop. He likely will go to his grave bellowing nonsensical trash about “corrupt” electoral processes and “rigged elections.”

Donald Trump will check out more than likely on the wave of stupidity on which he rode to public office in the first place.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Trump gets booed for … being vaccinated? Huh?

Can it really be that Donald J. Trump’s political base is populated by utter morons, people who actually boo their hero when he tells ’em he received a booster shot to fend off the COVID virus?

Yep, looks like it’s so.

Trump ventured to downtown Dallas on Sunday, along with Bill O’Reilly. They staged some sort of rally at the American Airlines Center. The crowd reportedly was fairly sparse. Trump, though, revealed while answering a question from O’Reilly that he received a booster shot in addition to his vaccination.

Many in the crowd booed their hero!

What the … ?

O’Reilly sought to dismiss the boo birds as a small portion of the gathering at the AAC. Still, it makes me wonder about these individuals. Oh, well. They do seem to mirror the mindlessness of their cult leader.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Turn ’em over, Donald!

Donald J. Trump has just been punched in the gut once again by a federal judge who says the former POTUS cannot keep his income tax returns away from congressional review.

So … does that mean he turns ’em over to Congress? Not just yet, no doubt.

But he damn sure should. I want to see what’s in them, you know?

Trump has been fighting off and on ever since he declared his presidential candidacy in 2015 whether to release the tax returns to public scrutiny, as other candidates have done since 1976. He said he would; then he said he wouldn’t or couldn’t; then he changed his mind again; then he said the Tax Man was auditing them, which means he cannot release them.

A federal judge Tuesday tossed out a lawsuit Trump had filed to keep the tax returns from Congress. He said Congress is entitled to review the returns, despite Trump’s various specious claims.

It’s all baloney. Trump knows it. So do the rest of us.

I have this suspicion we’re going to learn a whole lot more about Trump’s “fortune” than we do now. That isn’t as rich as he claims to be. That he has business dealings with suspicious characters. That he gives practically nothing to charity.

You know. Fun stuff like that.

C’mon, Mr. ex-POTUS. Release ’em!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I’m out, once again

So help me Almighty God in heaven, I am going to make yet another stab at turning my back on the antics and blathering of the most recent former president of the United States.

It has been hard to keep earlier pledges to do so. I mean, the guy keeps making news. He keeps roiling the waters. He keeps telling The Big Lie, which I have tried every way I know how to refute; I am exhausted trying to tell y’all the truth, which is The Big Lie is what it is and that the 2020 election was not “stolen” by “extensive voter fraud.”

The imbecile who got elected POTUS in 2016 just won’t let it die. Indeed, as he yaps and yammers about running for the highest office in 2024 he keeps bringing up the past. He has no future vision. I mean, holy sh**, he doesn’t have any vision of any kind that is worth discussing.

What do I go from here? Where do any of us go?

I am going to try once more to put this clown away. Put him in the Dumpster where his hideous legacy already is housed. The guy had no business being elected POTUS in the first place. He got precisely what he deserved when President Biden drummed his sorry oversized a** out of office in 2020.

He is a carnival barker. He is a fraud. He well might get indicted for criminal acts before too long; that, right there, might be cause to make make comment.

The rest of it? I’m out … I hope.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com