Tag Archives: Trump inaugural

national news, political news

(Crowd) size really must matter

You mean we’re still talking about the size of that inaugural crowd this past January? We’re still arguing over whether it measured up to what the brand new president of the United States called it — the largest gathering of human beings in world history … or something like that?

I guess in Donald J. Trump’s world, size matters.

The National Park Service’s inspector general now says the agency didn’t mess with the crowd size estimates of Trump’s inaugural nor did it leak any information to the media.

The Hill reports on the IG’s findings. Read the story here.

This malarkey about crowd size seemed to get under the president’s skin early this year. Various media published pictures showing the crowd gathered in front of Capitol Building at President Barack Obama’s first inaugural in 2009 and compared it to the crowd that heard Trump’s speech this past January. Obama’s crowd was, um, quite a bit larger.

Trump didn’t like hearing that. White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s initial press briefing included a serious scolding of the media for failing to report that the president’s inaugural crowd was the largest in history. The pictures, though, tell a different story.

Will this spell the end of this mini-tempest? Probably not, as long as Donald John Trump is president of the United States.

media news, national news, political news

‘Alternative facts’ will become Trumpster’s new ID

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcBblq-QOo4

Kellyanne Conway parlayed her experience as a public opinion pollster to a successful run as a presidential campaign manager.

She’s now a senior adviser to the new president of the United States.

Conway now has become the face and the voice of one of the more remarkable verbal miscues many of us have heard in some time.

She talked this morning about White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s version of a silly story dealing with the size of the crowd at Donald J. Trump’s inaugural. Then she referred to something called Spicer’s “alternative facts.”

“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd then sought to clarify what he heard by responding that there are facts and there are falsehoods.

Thus, a punchline was born.

This business of electing a new president is quite serious, indeed. I don’t intend to beat this horse any deader than it is, but in its way, Conway’s “alternative facts” notion seems to be the perfect metaphor for the discussion that prompted it.

Spicer’s angry rejoinder to the media about their reporting of the crowd size was ridiculous on its face. Then came Conway’s “alternative facts” gaffe.

Conway’s role as senior adviser requires her to speak well of her boss. I get it. Honest, I do. I don’t know what she’s thinking privately, of course, but it seems quite reasonable to believe she might be kicking herself tonight for uttering that silly statement.

Maybe she ought to take a page from former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the president’s pick to become energy secretary. Perry said this past week he now regrets calling for the elimination of the Department of Energy when he, too, was running for president.

Conway might consider taking a couple of days away from media representatives and then tell them “I regret” providing so much grist for late-night comedians.

I am one American who would accept her contrition.

national news

POTUS displays a clenched fist

We’ll have plenty of opportunity during the next four years to discuss politics and policy regarding the fellow pictured here.

For the next moment or two, though, I want to inquire about the image you are seeing here. It’s the president of the United States of America, standing on the podium before a yuuuge crowd on the National Mall.

He has just delivered his inaugural speech and he gestures with a clenched fist.

Is that the posture of a man truly interested in unifying the country? Is this how Donald J. Trump plans to bring people together?

It’s been said repeatedly that “words matter.” So does body language. So do gestures. They transmit certain images and reveal, I believe, a certain belief system of the person who offers the gesture.

I am not going to belabor this point. I’ve made it. Now I am out.

I just want to see the president of the United States open his arms, not raise his arm and display a clenched fist.

national news, political news

Ex-CIA boss ‘deeply saddened and angered’

John Brennan believes the new president of the United States conducted a “shameful” display in a most inappropriate place.

I happen to agree with him.

Brennan is the former CIA director who reportedly is “deeply saddened and angered” that Donald J. Trump would stand before the CIA Memorial Wall to chastise the media for its reporting of the crowd size at the president’s inaugural ceremony.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-cia-director-trump-should-be-ashamed-of-himself/ar-AAm6e3y?li=BBnb7Kz

The Hill reported this, quoting former CIA deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro: “Former CIA director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes. Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself,” Shapiro said in a pair of tweets.

Yep, that’s the president.

The Memorial Wall contains 117 stars that memorialize the CIA agents who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty for the United States. They are heroes. It’s a place of honor and dignity. It is not the place for anyone — even the president — to make patently political statements.

Yet there he was today. He virtually ignored the sacrifice made by the individuals honored on that wall. The president chose instead to make cheap political points.

The former CIA director is correct. The president’s actions were a “despicable display of self-aggrandizement.”

media news

Sean Spicer: media puncher in chief

Sean Spicer sauntered into the White House press briefing room today and did something quite extraordinary.

The White House press secretary looked the media in the eye and echoed what the new president of the United States has said repeatedly: He called them dishonest.

Think about that. The fellow who will be the president’s spokesman, his point of contact with the White House press corps, took off his proverbial glove and slapped the media square in the face.

And over what? This is the best part.

He challenged the media’s reporting of the size of the crowd at Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. The crowd, he said, was bigger than the media reported. It rivaled the size of the crowd that gathered for Barack Obama’s first inaugural and was larger than President Obama’s second inaugural.

Spicer bitched about pictures he said misrepresented the size of the crowd.

Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. The president of the United States is continuing his campaign to discredit the media. He trotted out his spokesman to lash out at the press corps while he — Trump, that is — was accusing the media of being full of “dishonest people.”

It’s been said that people in power shouldn’t “punch down.” If you’re the president of the United States, you pick fights, say, with members of Congress over policy matters or you argue with heads of state of adversarial nations.

Arguing over crowd size? To be candid, a lot of Trump’s supporters think he’s right, that the media deserve to be taken down, that they are too big, too powerful, too smug, too elitist and, oh yes, too liberal.

Let’s all get ready, folks. There’s much more of this to come. Of that I am quite certain.

national news, political news

Trump does battle with … ‘W’?

Yochi Dreazen has offered an interesting analysis on Donald J. Trump’s inaugural speech in an essay written for Vox.com.

It is this: The real target of the new president’s barbs and brickbats wasn’t his immediate predecessor, Barack H. Obama; rather, Dreazen writes, it was the guy who served before Obama — George W. Bush.

Here’s the essay:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-real-target-of-trump%e2%80%99s-inaugural-speech-wasn%e2%80%99t-barack-obama-it-was-george-w-bush/ar-AAm4gLu?li=BBnb7Kz

When you think about it, the notion makes sense.

Trump didn’t mention the Affordable Care Act, or the Iran nuclear arms deal or the return of diplomatic relations with Cuba in his inaugural speech. Republicans all across the land have been critical of all three policy issues.

His target instead, if you parse the president’s 16-minute inaugural speech, was the amount of money we’ve spend on foreign wars while neglecting our roads, bridges, airports and rail lines.

Dreazen writes: “Take Trump’s comments about how the US had wrongly ‘spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.’ The president who launched those costly wars — and who was responsible for the bulk of the estimated $5 trillion that the US has spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bulk of the 8,000 American military deaths in the two countries — was Bush, not Obama.

So, this seems to portend an interesting dynamic as the new president prepares to craft his agenda and present it to a Congress controlled in both chambers by Republicans.

GOP lawmakers do not believe we’ve wasted our effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor do they hold the Bush administration in the same highly negative light that Trump cast on it while he campaigned for the presidency. He called the Iraq War a “disaster,” a “huge mistake.”

President Bush — along with his father, Bush 41 and brother Jeb, the former Florida governor and 2016 GOP presidential candidate — returned the favor by refusing to campaign for Trump. None of them attended the GOP convention in Cleveland. They sat on their hands.

I’m going to venture not too far out on the limb here by suggesting that the Bushes are held in considerably greater regard by establishment congressional Republicans than the 45th president.

How will this play as Trump has to work with Republicans who control the flow of legislation and laws? Let’s all hold our breath … and wait.

national news

So much for unity at this inaugural

I have a message to the new president of the United States, if only he receives it.

The campaign is over, Donald John Trump. You won. You’re the president. You promised to unify the country. You could have started when you delivered the inaugural speech. Sadly — in my mind — you didn’t.

What the country heard from the president was a recitation of the themes that won over enough voters to elect him president.

He painted yet again a dark, forbidding portrait of the greatest nation the world has ever known. He talked about job losses, a dispirited military establishment, fear of radical Islamic terrorists, a general feeling that the nation has gone to hell in a hurry.

This wasn’t your typical inaugural speech. It contained little of the high-minded hope that presidents bring to their high office.

Here is the speech in its entirety. Take a look and judge for yourself:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/full-speech-president-donald-trump-inaugural-address/ar-AAm3VY0

Believe it or not, I was hoping there would be at least a glimmer of recognition of the progress that President Barack Obama made during his eight years in office: dramatic reduction in the jobless rate; revival of the auto industry; huge reduction in the annual federal budget deficit; success in the war against terrorists — including the killing of Osama bin Laden.

None of that came forward.

Interestingly as well was the lack of mention of the dreaded Affordable Care Act, which Trump has vowed to “repeal and replace.” Nor was there a mention of the Iranian nuclear deal that Obama negotiated to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

He talked instead of restoring jobs, bringing back manufacturing jobs. Here’s a news flash, Mr. President: Those jobs fell victim to automation, not poorly negotiated trade deals; good luck if you think manufacturers are going to forgo robots for human beings.

I’m going to wish the president well — believe it or not. If he succeeds in all that he wants, more power to him, and to the country he now leads.

Failure, as the saying goes, is not an option.

If only he could have lifted our spirits just a little bit.

national news

Hoping for a beautiful sunrise tomorrow

A lot of aspects of American life likely could change sometime this afternoon.

At 11 a.m. (CST), Donald John Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. Barack Hussein Obama will exit the world stage and jet off to Palm Springs, Calif., for some well-deserved R&R with his family.

The new president will attend a parade, shake some hands, then venture into the Oval Office.

Then — he says — he will sign some executive orders, which he is entitled to do.

Will these orders undo some of the many positive aspects of Barack Obama’s presidency? Trump, after all, has called the current president a “disaster.” He’s said his policies are “stupid.”

Trump, who calls himself a “smart person” with a “good mind,” and someone who will surround himself with the “best minds” and a team that has highest collective IQ of any in the history in the history of the republic, will get to work to make his mark on the presidency.

What that entails, at this moment — on Inauguration Morning — remains virtually anyone’s guess.

I am going to hold out hope for one thing to occur. It will be that the sun will set tonight and we’ll all be able to awake Saturday to yet another beautiful sunrise.

I am going to pray that the new president is successful in whatever plans he has laid out for the next four years. The consequences of failure are too grim to ponder.

military news, national news, political news

No tanks, cannons and assorted hardware at parade … please!

Oh, brother.

I just caught up with an item reported by The Hill that gives me the heebie-jeebies. The Huffington Post reports that Donald Trump’s team wanted the inaugural parade to include a display of military hardware: tanks, big guns, missile launchers, lots of troops.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/315184-trump-team-wanted-tanks-missile-launchers-in-parade-report

The Pentagon said “no” to that nutty idea. It seems that the brass realized something that Donald J. Trump’s didn’t understand, which is how such a display would look around the world.

The inaugural parade that occurs every four years is meant to salute the nature of our government, which stipulates that civilians control the machinery. As The Hill reported: “According to the report, the military shot down the request because of concerns about how it would look to have tanks and missile launchers in the parade, as well as the possible damage the tanks, which can weigh over 100,000 pounds, would do to the roads.”

There will be flyovers: The Navy, Air Force, Army and Marines will fly assorted combat aircraft over the proceedings. They’ll be seen and then they’ll be gone. I don’t have a particular problem with that.

But to roll the heavy equipment along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the presidential reviewing stand? That’s too much. It might play well in Moscow and Pyongyang. Not here!

national news

Decision made: I’ll watch inaugural speech … that’s all!

I usually glom onto the pageantry associated with events such as presidential inaugurations.

This time? I’m going to pass on most of it.

You know my feelings about the president-elect. No need to belabor that point. I am going to watch Donald John Trump take the oath of office and will watch his inaugural speech.

I hear it’ll be shorter than the average inaugural address. That’s fine.

I do need grist for this blog and I suppose the new president’s remarks will provide plenty of it.

However, this is going to surprise many of you. I am going to listen specifically for praiseworthy statements. To be candid, my continual bitching about Trump is wearing me out. I’ve told you already that I want the new president to succeed. We could get an inkling of whether he’s headed for success within a few minutes after taking the oath.

Inaugural speeches usually are chock full of high-minded, noble rhetoric that seeks to appeal to our better angels. A few of them over the two-plus centuries of our republic have left indelible impressions, the phrase that lasts throughout history. “Ask not what you can do for your country …” stands out, yes? “With malice toward none and charity for all …” That one, too.

I also get that words alone don’t spell success. We’ll need to see if the president delivers on the promises expressed on the steps of the Capitol Building.

Will the 45th president deliver a signature line, a moment for the ages? We’ll see. I am not betting my next steak dinner on it.

However, as a squishy liberal/progressive, my hope does spring eternal.