Tag Archives: White House

Donald Trump, national news

‘Well-oiled machine’ needs serious lube job

Donald John Trump’s delusions keep mounting up.

Take what he said again this weekend, that the White House is “well-oiled.” It’s all going swimmingly, according to the president. No worries at all. The executive branch is functioning precisely as it should and the president — he hastens to add — is doing more than any president in history.

A new book, “Fear,” written by legendary Washington journalist Bob Woodward, tells a different story. And, oh yes, there’s that now-infamous anonymous essay published in The New York Times that tells essentially the same tale that Woodward has laid out.

And that is? The White House is rife with chaos. Staff members are in near-panic mode. The president cannot be trusted to make the right decisions every time.

Donald Trump says it’s all a ruse. He said Woodward has made up all the things he reports in “Fear.” The mystery essayist is a “coward” who faces a Justice Department investigation, according to Trump.

That is the sign of a well-oiled machine running the executive branch of the federal government? Hardly, man. It’s the sign of a White House and a president with a shallow bench that cannot fill key posts.

Yep. The White House is in serious disarray.

The anonymous essay doesn’t tell us much new about the White House operation, say observers in Washington, D.C. As for the Woodward book, it, too, tells of a chaotic atmosphere.

Trump can believe what he says, I suppose. What galls me and perhaps millions of other Americans is that he expects others to believe what he says as well.

I do not believe him. The White House has become something just short of a loony bin.

media news

Anonymity produces courage

A mentor of mine, a fellow who gave me my first job in daily journalism, once said that newspaper readers have the right to judge what people said in opinion pieces against those who write them.

In other words, anonymity was a non-starter.

So, the New York Times today has just upset that norm. It has published an op-ed column by a “senior White House official” that declares that the White House staff’s first order of business is to protect the nation from Donald Trump’s more dangerous impulses.

Are we now going to dismiss this officials dire warning merely because he or she didn’t put a name on the piece that the NY Times has just published?

I’m not ready to do that.

Read the essay here.

Over the years I edited opinion pages in Oregon and in Texas, I rejected many requests for anonymity. Most people who wanted me to shield their identity was because they would be embarrassed by what they had to say. That wasn’t good enough. I usually didn’t hesitate telling them so. Yes, there are exceptions: rape or incest victims come to mind; I didn’t get any such requests during my nearly four decades in journalism.

The individual who has written this piece for the NYT appears to be motivated by a high calling. This individual doesn’t want to lose his or her job and believes that staying on the job is vital to continuing to protect the nation against the president’s nuttier notions.

Still, having said all that, I wish the individual who wrote essay this would have put a name on the essay. He or she would have lost a job, but there would be others at their respective posts who would remain faithful to the mission of protecting the United States against the president of the United States.

Think of how strange it is that we’re even having this discussion.

Weird.

national news

Waiting to read this blockbuster book

I’ll admit it. I couldn’t wait until Christmas to get a copy of “Fear,” the latest book by esteemed journalist Bob Woodward.

My son and daughter-in-law had given me a Father’s Day gift card from Amazon, which I redeemed this morning. The book will be on its way to my house once it is released on Sept. 11.

There is so much to digest, so much to ponder, according to the excerpts that have been released for public review. Here’s one tidbit, as expressed in a Twitter message put out by U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.: Trump’s previous personal lawyer was convinced would commit perjury if he talked to Mueller. Let that sink in.

It is sinking in as I write this brief blog post. It gives me a much clearer understanding on why John Dowd, the aforementioned “previous personal lawyer,” turned in his resignation as Trump’s lawyer. He couldn’t represent a client who would be prone to lying, even under oath, where he swears to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“Mueller,” of course, is Robert Mueller, the special counsel who at this moment remains up to his eyeballs in trying to determine whether the 2016 Trump campaign “colluded” with Russian goons who attacked our electoral system.

For the president’s former personal counsel to suggest he had no faith in his client’s ability to tell Mueller the truth is, um, shall we say, shocking in the extreme.

As it is frightening.

Donald Trump, national news

How can POTUS call anyone a liar? Really, how?

Donald J. “Liar in Chief” Trump is tossing the epithet of “liar” around a bit too loosely … if you ask me for my humble opinion.

His latest target is Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former White House special assistant who is alleging the president has used the n-word while discussing certain individuals.

You see, my issue here is that Trump has utterly zero moral standing to call anyone a liar. The man is the country’s pre-eminent lying politician. He cannot tell the truth. It’s impossible.

Any situation — big or small — is open to prevarication from the president.

So now he says Newman’s assertion that the future president’s use of the n-word while working on “Celebrity Apprentice” is false. He said the tape recordings that Newman alleges contain his use of the word don’t exist.

How in the name of Honest Abe am I supposed to believe a single utterance that flies out of POTUS’s pie hole?

I don’t want any misunderstanding here. Omarosa is no saint. She’s trying to sell a book. She got herself hired to work in the White House doing a job that no one has yet defined. She didn’t belong there. For all I know she well might have deserved to be fired.

But if you’re going to put her word against the Liar in Chief, well … I’m going with Omarosa.

Donald Trump

Do we need tape recordings to prove racist view?

Omarosa Manigault Newman has dropped a few stools in the punch bowl regarding her former boss and (apparently) former friend, Donald John Trump.

She says she has heard tape recordings of the future president using the n-word to describe “Celebrity Apprentice” contestants. He account has been backed up by illusionist Penn Gillette, who says he heard Trump say it in the moment.

She’s written a book about her time as a special White House assistant, a post she left when chief of staff John Kelly fired her. Newman recorded the termination that occurred in the Situation Room, which is a serious breach of national security protocol. That, however, is a whole other story.

But I have to ask: Do we really need to hear these recordings to verify what has been virtually obvious? I mean, consider the following.

  • Trump fomented the lie about our first African American president’s place of birth.
  • He also challenged Barack Obama’s academic credentials that admitted him to Harvard Law.
  • Trump denigrates the intelligence of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, CNN News anchor Don Lemon and pro basketball superstar LeBron James … all prominent African American public figures.
  • The president calls NFL football players protesting police brutality — the players are virtually all black — “sons of bitches.”
  • And all the while, he declines to issue a categorical condemnation of white supremacists, Klansmen and neo-Nazis.

Does the president refer to white critics as being less than intelligent? Why in the world did he continue to promote the defamatory lie that questioned President Obama’s constitutional right to seek the presidency? And why can’t the president bring himself to condemn hate groups such as the Klan exclusively? He recently watered down such “condemnation” with that sterile “all types of racism” qualifier.

Again, I ask: Do we really need to hear these recordings to validate what many millions of Americans — including me — believe about the man who’s been elected president of the United States of America?

This individual is a racist.

Donald Trump

Wacky, deranged? Why did you keep hiring her, Mr. POTUS?

Omarosa Manigault Newman might be all the things Donald Trump says she is: wacky and deranged, for example.

He’s angry with his former special White House assistant because she alleges the president used the n-word while he was running his TV show “Celebrity Apprentice,” where Newman first became associated with the future president of the United States.

Trump’s view of Omarosa has covered the pea patch. He has praised her and condemned her. She’s been alternately smart and sharp … and now she’s a dimwit, according to Trump.

The president now says the tapes of him using the n-word don’t exist. Omarosa says they do. Who’s telling the truth?

Hmm. Do we go with the man who’s been proven to have lied through his teeth or the woman who’s trying to sell a few books about her life and her work as a special White House assistant?

I’ll go with the former White House assistant.

What’s more, if Omarosa is as slimy and contemptible as Trump now says she is — why did he hire multiple times on his TV show before firing her and then hire as a White House special assistant?

This melodrama is a long way from its conclusion.

Donald Trump

Feast or famine with Trump team

I’m tellin’ ya, it’s feast or famine with the people Donald Trump has chosen to surround him in the inner circles of government’s executive branch.

He picks some turkeys and sprinkles in a few soaring birds just to keep it, um, oh so interesting.

Sadly for the nation — and I don’t include the president in this analysis — he has picked far more turkeys than otherwise.

Betsy DeVos as education secretary? She knows not a damn thing about public education. Michael Flynn as national security adviser? He lasted 24 days before getting fired for lying to the FBI about Russia matters. Sean Spicer as press flack? His first burst out of the box in January 2017 was to chide the media over their reporting of the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd. Tom Price at health and human services? He’s gone over a spending scandal. Scott Pruitt at Environmental Protection? He’s gone too for the same reason as Price. Reince Priebus as chief of staff? He could organize a bake sale, let alone control the info flow at the White House.

Now is Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant whom Trump “fired” already who’s been canned as a White House special assistant. She’s now revealing some dirty secrets (allegedly) about the president. She broke a serious national security protocol by recording a conversation — in the Situation Room — with chief of staff John Kelly; that’s a serious no-no, Omarosa.

To be fair, the president has picked some legitimately fine public servants. I mentioned Kelly. He’s got James “Mad Dog” Mattis as defense secretary. He has Mike Pompeo at State. I also like Elaine Chao at Transportation. I also believe Gina Haspel at CIA will do well.

Dang! That’s all I can think of at the moment!

But you get the picture. Trump has surrounded himself with a cadre of goofballs, liars, sneaks and cheats.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza says the president’s “best people” boast has cratered. Read his essay here.

I am afraid the quality of his inner circle — some of whom have been indicted by the special counsel looking into the “Russia thing” — speaks as much about the man who hired them as the individuals themselves.

That would be you … Mr. President.

So, so weird.

Donald Trump

Omarosa: One of the ‘best people’?

OK, I believe it’s fair to ask: Did a former White House aide intend to torpedo the president of the United States who vowed to surround himself with the “best people”?

Omarosa Manigault Newman reportedly was a recording dervish during her time as a White House special assistant in the Donald Trump administration.

Newman lost her job when White House chief of staff John Kelly fired her; she recorded the event. Now we hear she has a recording of a conversation she had the next day with the president, who seems to not have known that Kelly had fired her.

How many more recordings are out there? Hey, I want to know this stuff, given that we’re talking about a presidential administration.

The president took office after vowing to populate his administration with the “best people” and using the “best words.”

Omarosa Manigault Newman, who had no government experience when she entered the West Wing, only knew Trump because of her participation on the “Celebrity Apprentice” TV show that Trump hosted. Oh, well, she had as much government exposure as the guy who hired her in the first place … right?

Wow, man! Something tells me the hits will just keep on coming.

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news

Still can’t connect the words ‘President’ and ‘Trump’

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It is with some measure of regret that I must announce that more than 18 months into Donald Trump’s term as president I remain unable to connect the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively.

I wish it were different. Honest. I do wish it! I am no closer to making that leap than I was when he won the election in November 2016.

It’s not the president’s policies that bother me to this extent. Heck, I disagreed with many of his predecessors repeatedly. I disagreed with President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq; I have disagreed with President Obama’s seemingly personal ownership of public offices during his time in the White House; there was President Clinton’s perjury about over the Lewinsky relationship.

And on it goes.

All of those men, though, knew how to act. They behaved in a manner that lent dignity to their high and exalted office.

No, the problem I continue to have with Donald Trump remains of a personal nature. Yes, I disagree with his policy. However, were he ever to start acting, sounding and comporting himself like the head of state/head of government/commander in chief/leader of the free world, there would be a significant difference in the way I refer to him in his blog.

He does none of that.

Let’s just flash back a couple of days to that hideous re-election campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He pranced around the stage. He referred to a member of Congress as “a low IQ person”; he keeps referring to the media as the “enemy of the people” and purveyors of “fake, fake, disgusting news.”

He lies incessantly, to the point that I cannot take a single, solitary statement that flies out of his mouth at face value. Nothing! I am suspicious of every word he utters, every proclamation he makes.

How in the world can I refer to this individual by attaching his duly elected title directly in front of his name? I cannot.

I won’t give up every shred of hope that one day he’ll get it. That one day he’ll learn how to conduct himself with dignity and decorum. You see, I am an eternal optimist.

I want this guy to start acting  and sounding like a president. I just don’t expect it of him.

national news

WH provides phony cover for Trump

White House senior aides are swilling the Kool-Aid that makes them lie for the president of the United States.

They keep saying that Donald J. Trump is just dying to talk to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team that is examining whether the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our democratic system in 2016.

Does anyone really believe Trump wants to talk to Mueller? Does anyone believe that he can skate through an interview with a meticulous lawyer who has been working for more than a year in search of the truth behind this matter?

I do not believe it for a minute. Indeed, Trump has been getting plenty of armchair legal advice from Republicans to stay as far away from Mueller as possible.

That is far closer to the truth than the fiction being tossed out there by the White House staff and by Trump’s legal team.

Mueller appears to be closing in … on something or someone! I have no clue where he is going with this probe.

If the president were to ask me for my advice, I likely should say: Don’t do it, Mr. President. Then again, given that I detest the president, maybe I would succumb to the mischievous angels on my shoulder and tell him: Sure thing, go for it!

However, I am nowhere near the center of this tumult. I do believe that the Trump/White House legal team is lying about the president’s so-called “desire” to talk to Mueller.