Media ‘infatuation’ with Beto? Here’s a possible answer

Many conservatives, including those in the media, are wondering about a so-called Texas “media infatuation” with Democratic U.S. senatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke.

The Amarillo Globe-News today took note of that “infatuation” in an editorial. The paper stated: While there is a large degree of media infatuation regarding O’Rourke (precisely why is a good question), at least the duo have agreed to a series of debates.

I might have a possible explanation.

But first, let’s examine whether there is, indeed, an infatuation at play any more than there was one when O’Rourke’s Senate foe, Republican incumbent Ted Cruz, took office in 2013. Cruz became an instant media darling not long after taking his seat. It became apparent to many of us that Cruz’s fixation with the media had more to do with personal ambition than anything he sought to do for the state he was elected to represent.

But the media played along. It became something of a joke that the “most dangerous place in Washington was anywhere between Ted Cruz and a TV camera.”

Now he is running for re-election. The media are giving his opponent plenty of coverage as he barnstorms our vast state.

O’Rourke, a Democratic U.S. representative from El Paso, is conducting plenty of what are called “media events.” He takes part in town hall meetings, he makes speeches, he is taking selfies with fans and supporters in places like Pampa, Perryton, Plainview — where Cruz figures to do well on Election Day.

Does this constitute an “infatuation”? No, it doesn’t. It merely suggests that a candidate is doing his public relations advance work that gets the media interested in the first place.

My former colleagues at the Globe-News need to remember that the Cruz Missile did precisely the same thing six years en route to winning a hotly contested Republican primary and then the general election in 2012.

And it only intensified once the man became a U.S. senator.

Promise, promises … oh, wait! The wall?

Political campaign promises quite are often made to be broken and not kept.

The nation’s Novice Politician in Chief, Donald J. Trump, made a whole lot of promises while winning the 2016 presidential election. He kept some of them: tax cuts, pulling out of the Iran nuke deal and the Paris climate accords and … some other things.

A big one, though, remains unfulfilled. That wall along our southern border. Oh, and remember what he said about paying for it? He said Mexico was going to foot the bill, to which the Mexican government said categorically, “No way!”

The wall debate has entered a new phase. It has become a political football on this side of the border.

Donald Trump now declares his willingness to shut down the federal government if the next congressional budget doesn’t contain money to initiate serious construction of that wall.

There you have it.

A promise to make Mexico pay for a wall now has been turned on American taxpayers. You and I are going to pay for the damn thing!

That is, if it ever gets built.

I just want to stipulate once again that walling off our southern border is an un-American principle. It won’t keep illegal immigrants from coming in. They have been entering this country for the entire history of the republic. To throw terror into the hearts of Americans by suggesting that illegal immigrants are “pouring through open borders” and “wreaking havoc” on innocent victims is the height — or the depth — of demagoguery.

And, no, I do not favor open borders. I want stronger security. I want stricter enforcement of immigration laws. I also want there to be reforms enacted that speed up legalization proceedings for those who want to become legal residents — perhaps even citizens — of the United States of America.

The wall? It’s been a hideous idea since Trump first pitched it on the day he became a politician.

I damn sure don’t want to pay for a wall any more than Mexico wants to pay for it. What’s more, to hold the federal government hostage over this absurd notion is an exercise in stupidity.

Trump unleashes new fusillade against Mueller

Put yourself in the shoes of the man investigating whether the president of the United States and his team “colluded” with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

The object of that probe, Donald J. Trump, continues to fire off Twitter messages accusing Robert Mueller of conducting a “rigged witch hunt.” He says the probe needs to look at Democrats. He questions whether Mueller has a “conflict of interest” because of his friendship with a fired FBI director.

The president accuses Mueller, himself a former FBI director, of being corrupt and biased.

CNN reports: The attacks are not simply a window into his own rage, they also represent a coherent hardball strategy to unite his ever loyal political base and other Republicans behind him. With 100 days to go until midterm elections, that could be tough for the GOP.

How might you react to all of this?

Me? I would be incensed. I would be outraged. I would be damn angry at the president. Here’s the good news: It’s not about me. It’s all about a man who was praised universally when he got the special counsel job.

Mueller is on task. He and his legal team have kept their mouths shut. They have said nothing publicly about the shaming the president keeps heaping on them. They are acting professionally and with decorum and dignity.

Trump is acting, um, like an ass.

The president’s continuing harangue reveals a serious in this individual’s state of mind. No, I am not suggesting some mental disorder. I am suggesting that Trump possesses a personality trait that suggests a certain emotional instability.

Does that disturb you? If not, it should. It damn sure bothers me.

I have declared repeatedly on this blog that Donald Trump is unfit for the office he holds. His constant barrage in the face of a serious — and so far productive — investigation simply reaffirms what many of us have been saying since Day One of this individual’s presence on the political stage.

‘Very unpatriotic’ media? Really, Mr. President?

Donald J. Trump fired off a series of tweets in which he tears into the media, the so-called “enemy of the people.”

They say in part:

When the media – driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome – reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk! Very unpatriotic! Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news … accurately. 90% of media coverage of my Administration is negative, despite the tremendously positive results we are achieving, it’s no surprise that confidence in the media is at an all time low! I will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters …”

I want to focus briefly on the “very unpatriotic” label he has hung on the media.

It is quite “patriotic,” actually, for the media to report fully, critically and analytically about the government. For the president, moreover, to suggest that the media doing their job jeopardizes the lives and safety of Americans is an absolutely insane — not to mention idiotic — assertion.

The jeopardy stems from the president’s incessant attack on a “free press” that constitutes bullying and coercion in the extreme of the only private business offered specific protection from government interference in the U.S. Constitution.

The only “enemy of the people” I can find in this context occupies the chair behind the big desk in the Oval Office. Yes, I know that millions of Americans bristle at the criticism launched at Trump. Millions of other Americans, however, remain committed to understanding what the government is doing to us — or for us.

Those Americans depend on an unfettered and patriotic “free press” to tell them.

‘Sleaze’: the term that defines Trump presidency

Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion and obstruction of justice is slogging toward a conclusion no one can yet predict.

The special counsel has conducted himself with consummate professionalism. The person he is investigating, Donald John Trump Sr., has not.

The president has been revealing for all the world to see the level of sleaze that has permeated his professional career. It has followed him into his private life. It well might have infected the presidency.

These audio recordings of Trump discussing payoffs of hush money to a Playboy model who alleges a nearly yearlong affair with the future president offer up only the latest case in point. The recordings come from Michael Cohen, who already has acknowledged paying another woman, porn queen Stormy Daniels, to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she alleges having with Trump.

Trump denies both events occurred. Oh, but he paid these women the money. For what purpose? To buy them gifts? No. To keep them quiet!

Sleazy in the extreme.

It’s only the latest. The “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump bragging about he could grab women by their private area offers an even more graphic example.

The sleaze that surrounds the president has been built over many years. The very election of Donald Trump to the nation’s highest office does not erase it.

To think, too, that none of this was terribly surprising even during the 2016 presidential campaign. The 62 million Americans who cast their ballots for Trump more than likely knew at least tangentially about what he did during the entirety of his professional career. They knew about his serial philandering. They knew about how he has acted toward women and how he has lied at every turn.

Trump got their votes anyway.

It’s fair to ask: Has this level of sleaze become the new normal in American politics?

Sickening.

Trump and Cohen: one liar hired another liar?

You’ll need to follow me for just a moment on this one.

Michael Cohen once was Donald J. Trump’s trusted confidant. Trump spoke highly of his lawyer. He called him a good friend, a good lawyer, a dedicated professional.

Then the confidant goes through a change of heart. He says some things about Trump that the president has objected to vigorously. Now he’s a liar. He cannot be trusted.

And then comes the president’s current lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani, who this weekend described Cohen’s lying traits as “pathological.” He is a serial liar. He’s been lying for years, according to the former America’s Mayor.

But … wait!

Trump hired Cohen many years ago because he trusted him. What is Giuliani suggesting? Is he suggesting that Trump — a man with considerable “liar credentials” of his own — hire someone knowing he has this capacity for lying?

So, while Giuliani trashes Cohen’s motives and his credibility, is he also condemning the man who hired him in the first place?

Of course he isn’t. Giuliani has embarked on a credibility trashing campaign on behalf of his boss, Trump.

Which version of Michael Cohen are we expected to believe, the one who slathered all over Donald John Trump, or the one who is declaring his independence from someone he doesn’t trust as far as he can throw him?

Liar in Chief: the real enemy of the people

Of all the hypocritical utterances that have poured out of Donald J. Trump’s mouth since he became a politician, the one that continues to gall me in the extreme is his ongoing epithet that the media comprise “fake news” and are the “enemy of the people.”

The very idea that the president of the United States, one of the godfathers of the “birther” movement, would use the term “fake news” to reporters who are doing their job.

And for the president to describe the media as the “enemy of the people” is dangerous on its face, and not just to individual reporters, but to one of the bedrocks of our democratic system.

Trump and the New York Times’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, met recently to talk about the president’s ongoing bullying of the media. Trump tweeted out yet another irrational tirade against “fake news.”

My goodness. How in the world does this individual look at himself in the mirror?

He has lied continually. The birther movement was intended to question whether Barack Obama was born in the United States; he was, but that didn’t stop Trump from continuing the lie. Fake news? There you have it.

He lied about witnessing “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Trump lied about Obama ordering the bugging of his campaign office in 2016. He lied about millions of illegal immigrants voting for Hillary Clinton, giving her the 3 million popular vote margin over Trump.

He lies and lies some more.

To think that this individual has the unmitigated gall, therefore, to accuse the media of promulgating “fake news.”

Just who, I must ask, is the real “enemy of the people”?

It’s someone in power who would promote the lies that we have heard repeatedly since he began seeking the nation’s highest office.

Donald Trump is the enemy of the people he was elected to lead.

NY Times boss tells Trump what he needs to hear

Getting an earful of what one needs to hear often differs from what one wants to hear. A recent meeting between the president of the United States and the publisher of the New York Times offers a clear example of such a circumstance.

Donald J. Trump met with A.G. Sulzberger and got a snootful from the publisher about the president’s harmful and dangerous labeling of media as purveyors of “fake news.”

Are you listening — for once! — Mr. President.

Not surprisingly, the two men reported the meeting in dramatically different tones. Trump wrote this via Twitter: “Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times,” Trump wrote. “Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

Sulzberger’s take was different. I think I’ll go with the publisher’s account of what transpired.

He issued a statement that declared, in part: “I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” Sulzberger said.

“I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.

“Throughout the conversation I emphasized that if President Trump, like previous presidents, was upset with coverage of his administration he was of course free to tell the world. I made clear repeatedly that I was not asking for him to soften his attacks on The Times if he felt our coverage was unfair. Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country,” he continued.

Donald Trump is guilty as charged of lying about the media, just as he lies about damn everything else that flies out of his mouth. And the NY Times publisher has laid it on the line, that the attacks on the media thrust reporters and editors who are merely doing their job into harm’s way.

These attacks cannot stand.

How do you say it in, oh, Mandarin?

Donald J. Trump has been facing this scrutiny ever since he rode down that escalator at Trump Tower and declared his intention to “Put America First” while campaigning for the presidency of the United States.

Reuters News Agency reports that the Trump re-election campaign has getting its “Keep America Great” banners from a factory in the People’s Republic of China. The Trump team denies it. Reuters stands by the story.

I am going to go with Reuters’s version of events.

You see, Trump and his team have demonstrated repeatedly their ability to lie to our faces. They’ve done so on almost any and every issue under the sun. They get away with it in the eyes of the “base” that continues to support the president.

The Hill reports: Manager Yao Yuanyuan told Reuters that she was worried Trump’s own tariffs would hurt production numbers, but said she did not know if the banners’ buyers were officially affiliated with the Trump campaign or the GOP.

Yao said her factory has been making Trump banners since the president was a candidate. 

There have numerous reports ever since Trump entered the rough-and-tumble world of politics about Trump-brand clothing being made offshore. Trump hasn’t denied it categorically. So, there’s a history of his using foreign labor to manufacture items with his name on them.

Should it surprise a single person that he would do so with the re-election campaign banners? Hah! Not even …

Still wondering: Why the constant griping about Mueller?

You’ve heard it said of folks who likely are complicit in wrong doing that they “protest too much.”

Donald Trump continues to protest the existence of a special counsel, Robert Mueller. He keeps calling Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion with Russians during the 2016 election a “witch hunt,” which he’s elevated to a “rigged witch hunt.”

Is the president protesting too much? Is he seeking to discredit the investigator as a diversion from the evidence that well might be piling against him?

A politician who is as clean as Trump says he is might just want to keep his trap shut and let the investigation reach a favorable conclusion under its own power.

But that is not happening with this president. He keeps firing off Twitter message, he keeps ad-libbing at press events with statements that — at least to my ear — sound more like a guilty man than an innocent one.