Tag Archives: White House

International news, media news, national news

Do we quote the president … completely?

An interesting back story is developing in the wake of Donald John “Potty Mouth” Trump’s latest crude utterance.

Some media outlets are debating whether to publish or broadcast a profane expletive in an unedited form.

You know of which I am talking. The president expressed an angry epithet this week while discussing immigration with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the White House; he asked why the United States accepts immigrants from countries that are, um, less desirable than others.

He doesn’t understand why we accept immigrants from Haiti and from Africa. He wants to see more immigration from countries such as Norway.

He used a word I don’t like publishing on this blog. I choose to disguise it lightly with asterisks; readers know what it says. How do they know it? Because some  media outlets say it out loud.

CNN made a point of using the term explicitly in its coverage of the controversy last night. Anderson Cooper and then Chris Cuomo made no apologies for it. They both said the public needed to hear the word that flew out of the president’s mouth. Cuomo commented on how his children listened to Dad say it while he was offering commentary and was questioning guests on his news-talk show.

CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett, though, made a point that his network won’t repeat the word as Trump blurted it out.

I am going to continue to disguise the epithet. I once made a vow about a year ago that this blog wouldn’t sink into the rhetorical rathole.

I prefer to let gutter mouths — such as the president of the United States — speak for themselves.

International news

Trump said what about these countries?

Donald John “Potty Mouth” Trump Sr. is giving us all a bad name, dear reader.

It’s being reported that during a heated meeting in the White House, the president of the United States referred to immigrants from certain parts of the world as coming from “s***hole countries.”

Oh, he was referring to places such as Haiti and nations in Africa.

Then he reportedly said the United States needs more immigrants from, um, Norway.

OK. What are we saying here? Is the president saying “no” to immigrants from Third World countries populated by dark-skinned citizens? And is he suggesting further that by encouraging immigration from Norway and, I’ll presume for a moment, other Scandinavian countries, that he favors blonde, blue-eyed foreigners coming here?

As one can expect, the president’s remarks have drawn criticism from those who say he is race-baiting. They suggest the president is revealing — one more time — a crassness that betrays bias against people of a certain racial or ethnic makeup.

This isn’t Trump’s first derogatory statement about some of Earth’s inhabitants. He said once that everyone in Haiti suffers from AIDS and that Nigerians don’t want to return “to their huts.”

The White House hasn’t denied the president made those hideous remarks this week. Instead, the White House issued this statement, which reads in part, according to The Hill: “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” White House spokesperson Raj Shah said in a statement. 

Someone will have to explain to me what that means.

The immigration meeting offers another example of Donald Trump’s blatant ignorance of the principles that have made this country a beacon of hope to people around the world. Those principles have produced an open-arms policy that tells immigrants they are welcome here regardless of their socio-economic condition or — and this is critical — of their racial or ethnic background.

Spare me the refrain that Trump is merely “telling it like it is.”

He has disgraced himself. I fear he also has disgraced the high office to which he was elected.

national news

POTUS shows that ‘Fire and Fury’ is accurate

Michael Wolff wrote a book, “Fire and Fury,” that alleges that the president of the United States is clueless about government and the issues of the day — among other things.

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. responds that the book is crap; it’s fiction; it’s fake.

Then he convened an open-mic session in the White House to discuss immigration reform — and manages to demonstrate in real time the accuracy of Wolff’s description of Trump’s handling of affairs of state.

The man is clueless! Really! He doesn’t have a clue!

Trump said he’d sign whatever immigration bill the congressional leadership brought to his desk. Then came House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to remind the president that, actually, he cannot make that promise.

Why? Because the GOP base won’t stand for just any old immigration bill, such as something that doesn’t include construction of a wall along our nation’s southern border.

This is deal-making? This is how the “art of the deal” gets done?

Margaret Carlson, certainly no fan of Trump, wrote this in the Daily Beast:

What the White House actually accomplished Tuesday is the opposite of what it set out to do—set the bar low and show a president carrying out presidential tasks competently. If this had been Trump at the first tee, he’d have shanked it 50 yards into the woods. Into the bargain, the White House staff took more mulligans than (Bill) Clinton ever did. Aside from giving in to his Democratic captors, all the king’s men couldn’t keep him from going off script to long nostalgically for the olden days of Jack Abramoff memorial earmarks.

Read the rest of Carlson’s essay here.

Wolff actually stated in “Fire and Fury” that the White House operates in a state of constant confusion, chaos and contradiction.

I believe we have seen a demonstrable example of what Wolff wrote.

national news

Donald Trump is a White House ‘nobody’?

Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway has just offered a doozy.

The White House senior adviser actually said on national TV that “nobody here talks about Hillary Clinton.”

I won’t take too much time to respond to this latest alternative fact.

Conway got into a televised tiff with CNN’s Chris Cuomo , who challenged her assertion that Hillary Clinton’s name is never mentioned within the walls of the White House.

The president of the United States — for crying out loud! — keeps talking about Hillary. He did so yet again this week at a press conference. He keeps reminding us that he won the 2016 presidential election. Donald J. “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. keeps referring to Hillary as “my opponent.”

So, is Conway telling us that the president is a “nobody”?

Well, of course not!

However, she has offered some phony version of the truth that bears no resemblance to the real thing.

medical news, Uncategorized

No armchair diagnoses, please

You may count me as one who takes a dim view of those who think they can diagnose medical matters from a distance.

There’s a good bit of that going around these days as it relates to the behavior of the president of the United States, one Donald John Trump Sr.

Yes, he’s acting squirrely. And yes, he tweets messages that sound as if they come from a junior high schooler. He goads a dictator with nuclear bombs. He insults media representatives, politicians and a particular book author … not to mention at least one key former White House aide.

Does any of this mean the man is certifiably crazy? Is he nuts? Is he unfit mentally to be commander in chief?

I am not qualified to answer any of that. Neither are the “experts” who keep insisting the president needs to be kicked out of office on the basis of someone’s long-distance assessment of Trump’s mental fitness.

They don’t know of which they speak.

More than 50 years ago the nation had this same discussion about the late Republican U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964 against President Johnson. Goldwater was deemed to be nuttier than a fruitcake because he talked openly about going to war with the Soviet Union, the world’s other great nuclear power at the time.

Someone wrote a book about Sen. Goldwater and put in writing what many were saying out loud. Goldwater sued the author for libel and won. Then came something called the “Goldwater Rule,” which disallows people from issuing medical diagnoses without examining the person about whom they are talking.

I believe we should keep that in mind as we discuss Donald Trump’s conduct of the high office he occupies.

There might be political reasons to remove this guy. They haven’t emerged; perhaps they never will emerge. Medical assessments are best left to those who get close enough to the subject to offer them.

The rest of us are just firing pot shots from the peanut gallery.

national news, political news

Hillary again? Absolutely!

Donald Trump cannot resist the temptation to re-litigate the 2016 election.

Neither can some of the rest of us who didn’t support the president in his winning bid for the White House.

That all said, I want to state something that won’t surprise regular readers of this blog: If I could re-cast my most recent vote for president a second time, I would cast it in a New York minute for the candidate I supported in 2016; that would be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

We’re coming up on the first year since Trump took the oath of office. It’s been the longest year of many of our lives. Each day, let alone each week and month, has brought crisis upon crisis. Headaches caused by chaos and confusion abound in the White House. The president cannot get his feet under him.

It’s fair to wonder: Would a President Hillary Clinton have taken office amid such stumbling and bumbling? No. The transition would have been seamless.

It also is fair to ponder whether Hillary Clinton was the perfect candidate for president. Of course she wasn’t. She had her flaws. Clinton didn’t seem genuine. At times she sounded and actually looked inauthentic. But I didn’t — and still don’t — buy the notion about her being “crooked.” Her flaws as a candidate in my view do not include criminality.

My continued support for Hillary Clinton, I must add, presumes she would run against Donald Trump. To be totally candid, there were other Republicans I found much more attractive than the guy who won the GOP nomination. Had the nominee been, say, Ohio John Kasich or perhaps even U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida I might be persuaded to vote Republican for the first time in my voting life. I particularly like Gov. Kasich — and I actually would like to see him challenge the president in 2020.

However, if I had the chance to vote all over again between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I wouldn’t regret for a minute supporting Clinton.

Her competence and her understanding of government cannot be questioned. Neither can we question her decorum or her dignity.

I grew tired very early in the Trump administration of shuddering at the president’s rhetoric. I have zero doubt that Hillary Clinton would know how to act presidential.

national news, political news

Imagine top aides for Obama, ‘W’ turning on the boss

Stephen Bannon’s assertion in a new book that Donald Trump Jr. might have committed an act of “treason” by meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 brings to mind a fascinating observation.

It didn’t come from me originally. I heard it from Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst for CNN. Toobin said it would be unconscionable for David Axelrod to turn on Barack Obama or Karl Rove to do the same thing to George W. Bush.

Those two former White House strategists and key political aides were loyal to the boss and remain so to this day. Bannon presents another situation altogether.

He has said that Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian legal eagle constituted potentially “unpatriotic” and “treasonous” activity. They met, according to a book, “Fire and Fury,” written by David Wolff, to discuss dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton. The inference is that Don Jr. might have colluded with Russians seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome.

The revelation made public has enraged the president. He says Bannon “lost his mind” when he was fired from his job as chief strategist for Donald Trump. He argues that Bannon had little influence or impact on the White House.

We might be witnessing an unprecedented unraveling of a presidential administration. It does appear to be unusual in the extreme that someone who once had the president’s ear to turn on him in the manner that has occurred.

What’s more, the reaction from the president does have the appearance of near-panic within the White House.

Toobin does pose a fascinating query. Can you imagine Presidents Obama and Bush being torpedoed in this fashion?

I cannot.

national news, political news

This is ‘winning,’ Mr. President?

Happy New Year, White House staff. They’re seemingly filled with anxiety about their future and the future, possibly, of the Man in Charge — the president of the United States.

Donald Trump has returned to the White House from his “working vacation” at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He is sunny, upbeat and ready for the challenges that 2018 will bring him.

I hope he’s really ready for what could be a rough year, as if 2017 wasn’t rough enough.

Sure, he got that tax cut through Congress and signed it into law before Christmas. But … that was it, legislatively. Of course, the president had a different take on it, calling his first year the most successful in the history of Planet Earth.

A new year is now upon us all. The White House reportedly is getting ready for more senior staff shakeups. I guess they’re getting used to it by now. Trump has let one White House chief of staff go; he canned the White House communications director, who replaced the guy who resigned; he fired his first national security adviser; the first White House press secretary quit in a huff.

Deputy Cabinet officials have yet to be named in many departments. The secretary of state might be on the bubble; but then again, maybe not.

And, yes, we have the special counsel’s investigation into that “Russia thing.”

Against all that backdrop, there is a concern among White House staffers about a potential Democratic onslaught in the upcoming midterm election. “They absolutely should worry about 2018,” said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “I do fear a wave election. Democrats are highly motivated to vote against Trump and all Republicans. Trump has got to grow beyond the base, and he has got to make himself less hated among a group in the middle.”

Anxiety abounds

Yet the president keeps talking about “winning” and saying all is good, all is bright, all is just plain peachy within the White House.

I, um, don’t think that’s the case.

national news, political news

Trump has a Christmas chip on his shoulder

Donald J. Trump seems to be picking a fight during this season of joy, merriment and holy worship.

He is peppering his speeches with Christmas greetings, implying — falsely, in my view — that Americans have been inundated with politically correct “happy holidays” greetings that diminish the true significance of Christmas.

I want to invite the president to look around and listen carefully to television and other media’s treatment of the holiday season. I am hearing plenty of “Merry Christmas” greetings from TV hosts, journalists, merchants, children … you name ’em, they’re saying it.

The president, furthermore, keeps insisting that his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, diminished Christmas’s significance in our culture by saying “happy holidays” when, in Trump’s view, he should be wishing us Merry Christmas. Of course, he is mistaken. The president and Michelle Obama decked the White House halls of plenty of Christmas dĂ©cor, just as George W. and Laura Bush, and Bill and Hillary Clinton did and, well, you can go back to George and Martha Washington if you wish.

No ‘war’ on Christmas

What I suspect is occurring here is that the president is continuing the ongoing phony “war on Christmas” narrative that many in the conservative media have declared was underway.

C’mon, Mr. President. Give it a rest. Enjoy the holiday and wish happiness for everyone, even those who don’t celebrate Christmas.

political news

McCain to Hillary: Cool it with the criticism

John McCain knows the pain of losing a presidential election.

Accordingly, he has offered the most recent presidential election loser a bit of solid advice, although I disagree with the manner in which he delivered it.

The Arizona Republican U.S. senator has told Hillary Rodham Clinton to clam up, that she shouldn’t be so highly critical of the man who defeated her for the presidency. “One of the almost irresistible impulses you have when you lose is to somehow justify why you lost and how you were mistreated: ‘I did the right thing! I did!’” Trump told Esquire Magazine. “The hardest thing to do is to just shut up.”

He added: “What’s the f—–g point? Keep the fight up? History will judge that campaign, and it’s always a period of time before they do. You’ve got to move on. This is Hillary’s problem right now: She doesn’t have anything to do.”

Ouch, man!

McCain can’t claim to have remained silent about the man who beat him in 2008. He returned to the Senate after Barack Obama thumped in the race for the White House. He used his public office to criticize the president’s policies. To me, he did sound a little sour-grapy at times, but I understand his position as a member of the “opposing party” while sharing governing responsibility with the president.

Clinton’s situation is drastically different. She isn’t holding a public office. Sen. McCain notes that, too, suggesting that she could have waited a good while before publishing her book — “What Happened” — that chronicles her version of why she lost the 2016 election.

I say all this without apologizing for a moment that I supported her election as president — and I would do so again if she were to face Donald Trump a second time in a presidential election.

I just hope she doesn’t run again.

As for John McCain, he is in the midst of the fight of his life and it has not a damn thing to do with politics or policy. By my reckoning, his battle against cancer gives his remarks even more gravitas.