Category Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump

What awaits The Donald?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A friend of mine who lives in Australia has strong feelings about Donald J. Trump. They are so strong, I at times am compelled to share them with you.

He wrote me this weekend to comment on the election and what might await Trump as he exits the White House. My friend writes, in brief:

I dearly, dearly hope that when Trump eventually leaves the White House and Inauguration Day is done, that he is arrested and paraded publicly in handcuffs on whatever multitude of charges currently await him.

The spell he holds over his followers and enablers has to be broken somehow. If not arrested, then humiliation through other means … bankruptcy and/or divorce … a very nasty, messy public divorce … “

Ouch, man!

I don’t expect that to happen. I don’t really even want it to happen to our former president. The “spell” to which my friend refer does need to break into a million pieces. How might that occur without having to send Trump to the slammer?

I happen to agree with my friend about the need to break that spell. My strongest hope is that it will dissipate once it becomes clear that a former president has none of the actual power of the current president and only can speak for himself instead of for the nation.

This might sound naive, but my hope would be that Trump’s relevance will evaporate naturally. I don’t hold out much hope that the Trumpkins will accept that their hero’s defeat came from a wholesale rejection of the man himself, his behavior, the manner in which he conducted himself while representing a nation full of citizens most of whom never endorsed his becoming president in the first place.

Then again, I could be proven wrong on this … just as Trump himself proved me wrong by being elected president in 2016.

Donald Trump

Is reality setting in on Donald Trump?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, or maybe it’s real.

I could not escape the feeling today as I watched Donald J. Trump make his first public comments since losing the presidential election that reality is finally sinking in.

Which is that he lost the election and that Joseph R. Biden is going to take  over on Jan. 20 as the nation’s 46th president.

It’s only a gut feeling and, no, it has not a single thing to do with my trick knee. I was just struck by the notion listening to the subdued Trump discussing the Operation Warp Speed program his administration initiated to search for a COVID-19 vaccine that reality is staring him in the face.

Oh, he managed to take a few swipes here and there, at Pfizer for reportedly saying it didn’t receive any government assistance for the vaccine it is developing. I didn’t hear it but I understand he had an  unkind word for the president-elect.

However, by and large I detected a more somber tone from Donald Trump than I have been reading as he has unleashed the Twitter barrage since the election results produced a definitive answer to the future of the Trump presidency … which is that it is toast.

There also is news that he is withdrawing his lawsuit filed in Arizona against the state’s election officials for allegedly allowing illegal voters to cast ballots for President-elect Biden.

Yep, the end is near for the Trump presidency. I will resist feeling any sympathy for the losing candidate. He hasn’t earned a bit of it.

All I am feeling at this moment — right this minute — is happiness that the Trump cult of personality is on its way out of my White House.

Donald Trump

Trump might concede … really!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going out on a limb just a bit with the following observation, so I hope the limb doesn’t break.

I am placing a scintilla of faith that Donald Trump, if he loses the election to Joe Biden, will concede the presidency to his challenger. He won’t necessarily do it in the type of fashion to which we have become accustomed, but he is likely to bow out.

I say this understanding that I am likely to be laughed out of the proverbial room. I’ll stick with my story.

Trump has blathered and bloviated incessantly about what he believes is a corrupt election process. He said he would contest any result that produced a winner other than himself. For that matter, 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has advised Biden against conceding a result if Trump ends up winning. I don’t believe Joe Biden will heed HRC’s goofy advice.

As for Trump, we all know he appears desperate to remain in power. Those who know him best advise the rest of us never to blow off something he says, that he is a man of his word. So, when he threatens to challenge an electoral result, we should take him seriously.

I stand by the notion that Donald Trump is as phony as the university he once pitched and is as phony as the billions of dollars he claims to possess in his financial portfolio. He is as phony as the success he touted on his way to winning the 2016 presidential election and he is as phony as pandering to the evangelical Christian movement that continues to hang on his every prevarication.

Do I think he actually would go through with a challenge if Joe Biden manages to score an indisputable Electoral College and actual vote victory next month?

No. I do not.

I believe instead he would make some sort of concession speech that acknowledges that Joe Biden won the election, but that he would promise to keep tweeting his brains out for as long as he is president … and well beyond.

As I’ve asked in previous proclamations, don’t hold me to this as a firm prediction. I am just going to harbor a glimmer of faith that some semblance of reason might prevail in that numbskull’s noggin.

Donald Trump

Trump torches his britches

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanells_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump says he cannot remember if he got tested for the COVID virus prior to his debate with Joe Biden.

He cannot remember? Really? My goodness, his pants are ablaze.

Here’s the deal, dude. Ask your doctor! The man has a medical staff who get paid good dough to keep the commander in chief in the know about his medical condition.

Well, I don’t believe him when he professes ignorance about a test for a killer virus. Of course he knows. In the remote event he doesn’t actually remember he could place a call to the docs and ask them.

Duh!

Donald Trump

Shouldn’t POTUS know these things?

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to ask a question that should have been asked of Donald Trump at the Miami town hall session he held last night.

Trump received a question about conspiracy theorists, such as QAnon — the right wing goofballs who back his candidacy for re-election. “I don’t know anything about QAnon,” he said. It’s a familiar dodge that Trump has employed whenever he gets asked about, oh, white supremacists, or the KKK, or any of the loons who want him re-elected.

The question that never seems to get asked is this: As president of the United States, arguably the most powerful position on Earth, shouldn’t you know about these groups?

Trump seems all too willing to fall back on some sort of “I know nothing” defense of what I believe is the indefensible.

What also is indefensible has been the media’s reluctance to challenge him directly on what to me looks like an obvious follow-up question.

Donald Trump

‘Rage’ ends with … rage

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Bob Woodward crossed a line that reporters don’t usually dare to cross. He delivered a stinging rebuke of the subject of a book he has just written.

“Rage” chronicles Donald Trump’s deception — among other things — regarding the pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. We hear from Trump’s own voice how he “downplayed” the pandemic so as to avoid “panic” among Americans. He undersold the threat even though he knew it would be a killer of many thousands of Americans.

Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who, with Carl Bernstein, unraveled the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, couldn’t resist the temptation to offer a scathing indictment on Donald Trump at the very end of “Rage.”

“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety,” he intones, “I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

OK. I happen to agree with him. So do millions of other Americans. To be fair, millions of other Americans believe Trump is the greatest president in history. I believe those folks are tragically mistaken.

Do I condemn or condone what Woodward wrote at the end of his latest book. I will condone it, but with a caveat: He no longer can be assigned to work on any aspect of a future story on Donald Trump being reported by the Washington Post.

Woodward said he consulted with his wife, Elsa, who edited his work. He talked to other editors, book publishers, colleagues at the Post. They all agreed that he had to keep that ending in the book.

Woodward told the truth as I have known it all along about Donald John Trump.

Donald Trump

Keeping up with scandals

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I consider myself to be a fairly astute current events follower.

I say that, though, even as Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election keeps flying into the ditch. So help me it’s hard to keep up with the mistakes and scandalous behavior that places Trump’s effort — for my money — in much-need dire peril.

The coronavirus pandemic erupted on Trump’s watch. He downplayed it publicly initially. He likened it to the flu. It has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and is making many more sick. The United States now has about a fourth of the world’s infection and death, which far exceeds our percentage of total population.

Oh, my.

Then he denigrates the service of men and women who are injured or die while fighting for our country. Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic quotes Trump as calling these brave Americans “suckers” and “losers.”

You want more? Then the president decides to suggest that the top men and women in our military command are in it for the money, that they want war because it keeps weapons makers in business. War profiteering? Really? He said that out loud, in public, all by himself.

Let’s arc back to the pandemic. Trump told Bob Woodward, the esteemed reporter and editor, that he downplayed the COVID-19 threat initially because he didn’t want to “panic” Americans. Meanwhile, he dawdles and dithers on our response, allowing thousands of Americans to get sick and die from the killer viral infection. Oh, but let’s not cause panic.

I am having trouble keeping up with all this stuff, man.

Of the recent tempests that have dogged Donald Trump, I guess you can settle on any of them as being potentially fatal to his re-election campaign effort.

For my liking, I am leaning toward how Trump is going to explain to us unwashed masses how he justifies lying to Americans about a pandemic he knew would kill thousands of us. How does he justify seeking to pacify a nation with false bravado?

Any one of those events might be enough to fill a nation with rage. Taken altogether? Donald Trump has his hands full.

Donald Trump

POTUS fails the troops

I cannot let this story go. It is so upsetting that it fills me with rage whenever I think about it, which happens to be quite often.

Donald Trump is reported to have branded fallen warriors “suckers” and “losers.” He cannot stand the sight of injured servicemen and women. The Atlantic is reporting these details. Trump denies them.

Fine. He can deny them all he wants. I happen to believe the reporting, which I find credible and thoroughly sourced.

We know he has said publicly that the late Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam War prisoner, was “a hero only because he was captured.”

Let’s couple this with reports that Trump has yet to challenge Russian strongman Vladimir Putin over reports that Russian spooks paid bounties to Taliban terrorists for Americans killed in battle.

Is there a pattern here?

The idea that Donald Trump would refer to fallen U.S. warriors as “losers” is abhorrent on its face. Then I couple that with reports of bounties being placed on the men and women he sends into harm’s way and his failure to act on those allegations.

Both elements are infuriating to a maximum degree. They also seem so very believable.

Think about the commander in chief talking as he reportedly has done about those who have fallen in battle. Think, too, about a commander in chief who wouldn’t demand a full explanation from the leader of a hostile power about an allegation that he has paid terrorists a bounty for killing our battlefield heroes.

Despicable, yes? It is … and much more. This individual took an oath to protect us against our enemies. That most certainly applies to the men and women who stand as our front line of defense against enemy soldiers. Donald Trump has failed to fulfill his sacred oath.

There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind — certainly not in my own mind — that Donald Trump is unfit to serve.

Donald Trump

Why does he want this job?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

I have been pondering something privately that I now want to share publicly. It is this: Why does Donald J. Trump want to keep doing a job I believe he hates doing? 

I long have believed that Trump accepted the notion in 2016 that he was going to lose the presidential election to Hillary Clinton. The polls had him trailing all the way to Election Day; it turned out he lost the actual vote, but won the Electoral College by a narrow margin … but you know all that.

I do not believe in my gut that Donald Trump likes going to work every day. I long have thought that he detests the notion of answering to Congress, or even to voters, you know, the folks who are actually in charge of matters involving government. He isn’t wired that way.

Trump spent his entire adult life being his own boss. He pushed people around and bullied them. He keeps doing it today. Trump doesn’t grasp the limitations of his office or understand why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did, giving Congress and the judiciary equal doses of power.

Forgive the psychobabble, but it appears to me — sitting out here in Flyover Country — that Trump merely relishes being at the center of attention. Even when it casts him in hideously negative terms. It’s a form of masochism, I suppose. He doesn’t like being told he’s an a**hole, but getting that kind of negative bounce means he has our attention.

So now he wants another four years in the hottest seat on Earth. How come?

He can’t speak intelligently or with any nuance or detail about legislation. Trump doesn’t study. He doesn’t read. Trump admits to being bored with “presidential daily briefing” papers. Watch him read from prepared text and you well might get the sense — as I do — that he sounds like a prisoner of war being told to read a propaganda statement.

I am totally, completely and categorically prepared to give this guy the boot from my White House. He doesn’t like living in the place he once called a “dump” and he damn sure doesn’t like doing the job to which he was elected to do.

Donald Trump

Would he dare drop out?

It won’t happen.

I wish it would. I wish we could be done with this clown now, not later, certainly not beyond next January.

Donald Trump wants to be re-elected president of the United States. He is digging up every bit of dirt he can find on Joe Biden; he is concocting “rigged election” conspiracies; he is playing to his base, hoping to fire ’em up.

Yet John Harris writes an essay in Politico that suggests Trump might drop out of the race. Harris reminds us that in March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson went on the air to tell us of a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam … but then saved the surprise for the end of his remarks. He said he wouldn’t seek or wouldn’t accept his party’s nomination for “another term as your president.”

Is such an announcement in the cards if the evidence keeps mounting that Trump will face a potentially resounding defeat in November?

Harris thinks it’s possible. He might be the only journalist who is willing to make the suggestion. As he writes: The Trump-drops-out scenario hinges on the assumption that Trump is less concerned with wielding the levers of government than he is preserving his role as disrupter at large in American politics over the next decade. The latter might be much easier to maintain if he avoids being tattooed as loser in November—especially if the margin is larger than could be attributed, even by his most conspiracy-minded supporters, to media bias or vote-counting manipulation by Democrats.

I find it a fascinating and tantalizing idea. It gives me hope that the end of the Trump Era might be coming sooner rather than later.