Tag Archives: Twitter

media news

How about ‘reprehensible,’ or ‘despicable’?

I am growing weary of these tepid responses from Republican officeholders to the tweets that the nation’s top Republican keeps firing into cyberspace.

Donald J. Trump’s itchy Twitter finger keeps degrading the presidency. Yes, many Republicans are speaking out. They are angry, embarrassed and dismayed at what the president is doing.

But get this, from Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of my favorite Republicans and the guy I wanted to see win the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

He calls the president’s latest tweet tirade “unacceptable.” He said it is “unfortunate.”

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the other day that Trump’s attack on MSNBC broadcaster Mika Brzezinski was “inappropriate.”

That’s it? There’s been more of that kind of lukewarm language coming from GOP leaders.

Check out more tweets here.

I’d settle for terms like: reprehensible, despicable, disgraceful, degrading, frightening … you know, language that expresses genuine outrage.

Will any of it matter? Will that kind of response get to Donald J. Trump, making him think better of his intemperate use of a social medium?

No. It just would send a signal throughout the country that it might be dawning on Republican leaders that the guy who occupies the presidency is unfit for his high office.

national news, political news

A ‘malignant presidency’?

Carl Bernstein knows a political malignancy when he sees one.

The famed journalist and author believes he is witnessing one at the moment that well might be metastasizing before our eyes.

Those of us of a certain age who pursued journalism as a career owe that choice in large part to the work that Bernstein did along with his Washington Post colleague and pal Robert Woodward. Together they uncovered the Mother of All Scandals that erupted in the wake of that “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate office complex in June 1972.

That was then. Bernstein is still in the game, although now as an author and TV news pundit/contributor.

Bernstein takes a hyper-dim view of what is transpiring with Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States. According to CNN.com: “We’re in foreign territory,” Bernstein said, speaking on CNN’s “New Day.” “We have never been in a malignant presidency like this before. It calls on our leaders, it calls on our journalists to do a different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this presidency and the President.”

Bernstein sounds fearful of where this might all end up with the president. The Russia probe, the alleged conflicts of business interest, the nepotism, the failure to unite the nation, the incessant tweeting and the tirades against the media, the incessant stream-of-consciousness lying … it’s all part and parcel of Trump’s still-developing presidency.

How does Trump govern? That seems to be the major question shadowing the president as he lurches from crisis to crisis.

He threatens members of his own party who don’t support his effort to replace the Affordable Care Act. Upon whom can he depend in Congress to have his back if he unleashes his venom against fellow Republicans? The president is about to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man he’s never seen up close. Still, Trump continues to refuse to accept what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded, which is that Putin and his gang of goons sought to influence the 2016 election outcome.

I’m pretty sure he carries a substantial anti-Trump bias as he offers his analysis of the current political climate. However, I am not going to dismiss this guy’s view out of hand.

Instead, I accept his challenge to the media in this country to stand up to the president and to do the job they are entitled to do, which is to hold the president accountable for his words and deeds.

As Bernstein said: “We have to … be kind of medical reporters right now. I don’t mean about the president’s psyche, but rather about every aspect of his presidency, and how and whether it is functioning, because many aspects are not functioning.”

media news

Trump keeps up drumbeat of insults … arrgggh!

I am running out of ways to express my outrage at the conduct of the president of the United States of America.

It’s not enough that Donald John Trump decided to attack a broadcast journalist with a vulgar attack via Twitter. Or that he refuses to acknowledge that his conduct is unpresidential, unprofessional, undisciplined, indecent and maybe even immoral.

His fellow Republicans implore him to stop. They say it’s beneath the office he occupies. He denigrates the presidency, demeans the country he was elected to lead and lends credence to those — such as yours truly — who question his fitness to govern.

He keeps it up. Today was no different for Donald Trump. He fired off another of those idiotic, moronic and despicable tweets in which he blasts the MSNBC talk show host and her broadcast partner.

I’m out … for the time being.

media news

Twitter insult might doom health care overhaul

Donald J. Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum bodes potentially disastrous for a legislative goal he and congressional Republicans have established.

They want to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. A U.S. Senate bill is hanging by a thread. Senators postponed their vote on it until after the Fourth of July recess.

So what does the president do? He fires off a vulgar, insulting tweet this morning about two MSBNC talk show hosts, ratcheting up his idiotic war against the media. The tweet makes some bizarre reference to Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift.” He refers to her as “Crazy Mika” and her co-host Joe Scarborough as “Psycho Joe.”

Republicans upon whom the president depends to help him approve this ACA repeal/replace idea now are running like thieves away from Trump.

It’s fair to wonder: Is the president’s lack of discipline, decorum and dignity going to cost him a victory that — frankly, it must be said — was tenuous?

This is no way at all at how you govern.

media news, national news

Memo to Melania: Rein in your husband

Dear Melania …

I hope you don’t object to my addressing you by your first name. I mean no disrespect. To my point …

I greeted your call for an end to cyber bullying with a bit of skepticism. My first reaction, along with that of millions of other Americans, was that you need to start at home in that noble effort.

You need to curtail your husband’s use of Twitter, I suggested, as a weapon to bludgeon foes and assorted critics.

Later I posted a blog entry extolling the virtue of your effort. You are right to use your high profile as first lady of the United States to end this scourge of Internet bullying. I applauded you then and I applaud you now.

However, your husband is at it again. I’m sure you’ve heard about that ghastly tweet he posted this morning about Mika Brzezinski, about how she was “bleeding from a facelift.” He called her “Crazy Mika.” Then he aimed his Twitter barrel at Joe Scarborough, her MSNBC morning talk show co-host, calling him “Psycho Joe.”

Just as a reminder, here is what he wrote: “I heard poorly rated Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came …” Trump tweeted before adding “to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

The recriminations are going to come quickly over a period of time, Melania. Your husband’s fellow Republicans are incensed. Some of them are as incensed as the rest of us who didn’t vote for your husband.

I am reminded of the question leveled at the reviled late U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who in the 1950s said there were communists employed at the State Department. “Have you left no sense of decency?” came the question from U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch to Sen. McCarthy during one of those infamous Senate hearings.

It’s time to ask the same thing of your husband. I never thought I’d wonder this about the president of the United States: Has he no sense of decency, or decorum? Does he disrespect the high office he holds so much that he stoops to the level of juvenile petulance to communicate in such a crude, hostile and undignified manner?

I guess, Melania, we’re back to where we began. Isn’t it time you reined in that husband of yours before you launch your campaign against cyber bullying?

media news, political news

POTUS has sunk yet again to another new low

Donald John (Internet Bully in Chief) Trump has done it yet again.

He has demonstrated that there is no bottom to the level of crassness he is able and quite willing to exhibit on social media.

The president of the United States of America has decided to engage in a vile insult campaign against a member of the media, this time suggesting this individual was “bleeding from a facelift.”

The target is Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the MSNBC morning talk show “Morning Joe.” What did Trump say about this women, whose father, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, recently died? He called her “Crazy Mika” and said she and her co-host, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, wanted to spend some time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “She was bleeding badly from a facelift. I said no,” Trump said this morning on Twitter.

Read the NY Times story here.

According to the Times: The graphic nature of the president’s suggestion that Ms. Brzezinski had undergone plastic surgery was met with immediate criticism on social media. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wrote on Twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And a spokesman for NBC News, Mark Kornblau, wrote on Twitter: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’”

I am running out of ways to express my revulsion over the president’s conduct. His “war” against the media rages on.

This individual was elected to the nation’s highest office. It demands respect from those of us who revere what it stands for. It also would seemingly demand respect from those who occupy it. That the current White House resident, the commander in chief of our armed forces, our head of state and government would resort to this kind of ghastly insult campaign denigrates the office to a whole new level.

Now, I fully expect some criticism of this blog post from those out there who are going to change the subject by suggesting that other presidents have acted badly while holding this office. Spare me the diversionary tactic. This has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with the here and now — and the individual who was elected to be our national ambassador on the world stage.

If only I could expect that there is nothing more hideous that the president can do. Sadly, I now fully expect him to go even lower.

Let’s all just wait for it.

medical news, national news

Hard to keep track of what Trump likes, loathes

If you’re keeping tabs on the president’s tweets and assorted public statements, then you’ve got your hands full.

When the U.S. House of Representatives approved its American Health Care Act by the narrowest of margins, Donald J. Trump called the GOP-authored-and-passed bill “spectacular.”

Then he tweeted that it is “mean.”

Then tweeted about the draft U.S. Senate plan — again crafted solely by Republicans. He says now, with a vote scheduled for later this week, that the Senate plan is far better than the House plan.

OK, Mr. President. We keep hearing how you make decisions based on the last person to have your attention. Which of these plans is the suitable replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which you once said would be “easy” to replace, but now you say is “hard”?

I cannot begin to possibly keep up with this guy’s ever-evolving stance — on anything and everything!

International news, media news

Who in the world can trust POTUS?

Donald J. Trump’s obsession with Twitter is diminishing his standing around the world, or so it would appear.

I keep circling back to a question: How do world leaders trust anything the president of the United States tells them when he continues to tweet ridiculous messages?

Take these instances involving Trump and his tweets:

* He said former President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of his campaign office. That was false.

* The president said Hillary Rodham Clinton’s popular vote margin “victory” in the 2016 election was because of “millions” of illegal immigrants voting for her. Another falsehood.

* He says Germany is making “too many cars” and selling them to Americans.

* Trump ripped into London’s mayor after the Manchester shooting by misquoting what the mayor said about the threat of international terrorists.

I am missing many more examples just since Trump became president, but you get the idea.

The man cannot control his impulses. He fires off these tweets and then changes the subject. He meets in private with world leaders and then blabs his brains out about them.

The president’s Republican allies in Congress, though, give him a pass. House Speaker Paul Ryan blithely states that Trump is “new at this,” meaning he’s “new” at governing, new at understanding the limits of presidential power.

The world is a volatile place, which I am sure the president understands. What I do not get is why he cannot control himself. I’m pretty sure we’ve got leaders all around the planet who are wondering the same thing.

national news, political news

There goes ‘unity’

That was a brief respite from the calls for “unity” in the wake of that terrible shooting in Alexandria, Va.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sat together and pledged to put bitterness aside. They sought to honor wounded colleague Steve Scalise, the GOP House whip.

Democrats and Republicans prayed together after their charity baseball game Thursday. They hugged each other. Democrats won the game and then gave the trophy to Scalise, who is recovering from his serious gunshot wound.

All is good, yes? Hardly.

Now comes the Republican in Chief, Donald J. Trump, who launched a Twitter tirade. He wonders why Hillary Clinton isn’t being investigated; he calls special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president’s connection with Russian government officials a “witch hunt.” Indeed, he calls it the worst witch hunt in American political history.

And to think he did that while calling for “unity” in a recorded message delivered before the start of the charity baseball game.

media news

Even presidents need a ‘filter’

The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.

OK, there you go. Donald J. Trump has tweeted — yet again! — in a rant that takes aim at the “mainstream media” because it is seeking to do something the president of the United States does not want to do.

The media are seeking to drum into the president’s thick skull that these tweets represent the statements of the head of state, head of government, the commander in chief of the world greatest military apparatus.

Thus, this individual — the president — must exercise some self-control, self-restraint, and even some self-awareness in sending these messages around the world.

George Conway, a lawyer of some repute — and the husband of Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway — has warned Trump about the danger of firing off these tweets.

Moreover, he is stripping away any claim of “executive authority” he might want to claim as he does battle with Congress, special counsel Robert Mueller and former FBI director James Comey over the “Russia thing” that continues to bedevil the Trump administration.

Does anyone consider U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to be a tool of the “fake media”? He isn’t. Even a Trump ally such as Sen. Cornyn has acknowledged the self-inflicted “problems” associated with Trump’s tweet storms.

The bottom line is this: Mr. President, the so-called “FAKE MSM” is issuing you a well-deserved warning about the trouble your own impulses can produce.

Get a bleeping grip!