Tag Archives: White House

national news, political news

Typical weekend for Trump: Fore!

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I am not going to criticize a president simply for playing a round of golf.

I’ve noted many times that the president of the United States is never not the president. He’s on call 24/7 and is just one instant message away from being alerted to a national/international crisis.

OK, that said … Donald J. Trump keeps demonstrating that he is not a man of his word as it relates to his constant golf outings.

The president said while campaigning for the office that he never would take time away from the White House to play golf. He criticized President Barack H. Obama for playing too much golf while he was on duty.

I stood up for Barack Obama then. I’ll stand up for Donald Trump now if he wants to play golf.

However …

It’s that constant harping while campaigning for the office that makes criticism of the president an irresistible temptation.

If only he hadn’t lied about his intention. Had he told us the truth — that he planned to play golf at one of his posh resorts while serving as president and still got elected! — then I wouldn’t be saying anything at this moment.

He didn’t. He flapped his yap while making a false promise to stay on the job in the White House. That makes his golf outings targets for criticism.

media news, national news

POTUS redefines response strategy

Donald Trump’s communications team is defending The Boss by repeating a troubling dodge.

It is that the president is a human being and that he shouldn’t have to endure constant attacks without responding to his critics as he has done.

Deputy White House press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders was called out the other day by White House reporter who skewered her for the White House’s constant yammering about “fake news.” He said the media are simply “doing their job.” Sanders objected to the gist of what he said and implied that the media, in effect, are conspiring to concoct reports designed to put the president in a negative light.

Sanders is as wrong as wrong gets.

As for Trump’s human instincts, I feel compelled to remind the young press flack that the president’s recent predecessors all avoided the kind of petulance exhibited by the current leader of the free world.

Barack Obama also was hammered repeatedly during his two terms in office. Did he say anything even remotely similar about his critics that we are hearing from Donald Trump? Umm. Nope.

George W. Bush his share of fire from opponents as well. Did the president respond in kind? Did he go on social media to portray the media as “the enemy of the people”? No once again. Instead, President Bush understood what all presidents have known, which is that the media perform a valuable service in keeping public officials accountable for their deeds and statements.

Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford all knew as president that criticism goes with the territory. Even Richard Nixon, who came closest to the Trump model of media response, knew better than to say out loud that the media were the enemy.

I no longer have any serious hope that Donald Trump will grasp what his most recent predecessors all knew about the media and their relationship with the president.

I do, though, expect better from his spokespeople, who should cease insulting Americans with the idiocy that the president is reacting like any normal, run-of-the-mill human being.

The men who preceded him were human beings, too.

media news, national news, political news

Trump changes presidency … not for the better!

Here’s another broken campaign promise from Donald John Trump.

He said he would change his approach if he were elected president of the United States, that he would become “more presidential.”

It hasn’t happened. The 71-year-old man who now is president isn’t going to change. He has demonstrated with graphic clarity his unwillingness to lend dignity to his comportment.

Indeed, this individual is changing the office he occupies.

Think of this for a moment. He goes to war with his foes, critics — and, yes, the media. He does so via Twitter. He has elevated a certain social medium to the level of venue for his policy pronouncements. The Trump White House acknowledges that his tweets become the official word of the president of the United States, our head of state, our commander in chief, the most powerful man on the planet.

Do you get it? He is lowering the office to his level! Rather than elevating his own standing to that of the exalted office to which he was elected, Trump is reducing the office a sort of playground, one populated by an overaged juvenile delinquent.

The president has disgraced his office. I would rue the day that he disgraces the great nation he is supposed to lead. However, the rest of us are better than the man who purports to be our leader.

media news

Trump vs. Media battle rages on … and on

Donald J. Trump in one important way is no different from the 44 men who preceded him as president of the United States of America.

They all disliked, distrusted and at times disrespected the media.

The difference between Trump and those other guys is the tone and tenor of the response he levels at the media for doing their job.

Trump has branded all media that report stories that aren’t totally favorable as “fake news.” Moreover, he is making admittedly superb use of social media to carry that message forward. Beyond that, his base is loving it! The folks who voted for him and who bought into his “tell it like it is” mantra continue to give him a baseline of support that barely creaks under the weight of the negativity that the president heaps onto himself.

Is this guy, though, any different from his predecessors in his dislike of the media? Nope. Not at all.

Trump assails media again

Every single predecessor — certainly those who served as president during the past 60 or 70 years — have griped openly about the coverage the media provided. Even when they complained, though, many of them did so with a smile/smirk on their face. I believe it was President Franklin Roosevelt who referred to the media’s coverage of his dog Fala, noting how reporters should lay off the presidential pooch.

On and one it has gone.

Do you think President Kennedy wanted the media to cover the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the manner that they did? Of course not. He took the criticism like a man.

President Johnson didn’t much care for the media’s coverage of the Vietnam War, either. He understood the role of a free press and accepted it as part of the job he inherited when his predecessor was gunned down.

I don’t recall hearing President Reagan bitching loudly about the coverage of the Iran-contra controversy.

President Clinton was bombarded with negativity during his eight years in the White House. His wife was a frequent target, too. And occasionally, the media actually poked maliciously at their daughter, for crying out loud.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also took their share of hits over the course of their combined 16 years in office. And, by the way, President Obama was the victim of actual “fake news” promulgated by the likes of, oh, Donald J. Trump — the originator of the lie he kept telling that Obama was constitutionally ineligible to serve because he was born in a far-off land. Can there be a greater example of presidential hypocrisy than that?

The rules of president-media engagement have changed in the Age of Trump. The media are doing the job the U.S. Constitution allows them to do. The president doesn’t like what they report, so he — in effect — defames reporters and editors for serving the public interest.

Worst of all? The complainer in chief  is getting away with it!

national news

Ready for the White House portrait unveiling?

At some point near the end of Donald J. Trump’s current term as president, his protocol staff will likely schedule an appearance by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, and the former president’s wife, Michelle.

It’s been a custom for many years. The former first couple returns to the White House to unveil their official portraits. The president’s portrait hangs next to other presidents; the first lady’s portrait hangs in a gallery that includes her predecessors.

I remember watching when President Obama and Mrs. Obama welcomed George W. and Laura Bush back to the White House in 2012. It was a heart-warming ceremony, with all four — the current and former first couples — exchanging quips and remembrances of their time in the White House.

Is it possible for the Obamas to return to the White House at the invitation of Donald and Melania Trump? Can the former president set aside the astonishing rhetoric that the current president hurled at him? We have the on-going lie that Trump kept alive about Obama’s place of birth; then we have the defamatory accusation from Trump that Obama “ordered the wiretap” of the president-elect’s campaign office.

Oh, and how about the comments that Michelle Obama delivered in the wake of that ghastly “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump admitted to groping women and grabbing them by their private area?

I can just imagine how, um, tense the next portrait-unveiling is going to be when — or if — it occurs.

International news

Sanity presents itself in Trump White House

Donald Trump pledged to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Then the president thought better of it. He has signed a six-month extension to keep the embassy where it’s been since the founding of Israel in 1948, in Tel Aviv, a relatively safe distance from where terrorists and other sworn enemies of the United States and Israel commit their acts of violence.

http://thehill.com/policy/international/335850-trump-keeps-us-embassy-in-tel-aviv?rnd=1496325457

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to become capital of an independent state, when or if that occurs. The Israelis claim all of Jerusalem as their own holy place.

“We know that peace is possible if we put aside the pain and disagreements of the past and commit together to finally resolving this crisis,” Trump said in a speech in Jerusalem. “I am personally committed to helping Israelis and Palestinians achieve a peace agreement.”

The idea is to broker a peace deal that determines the fate of the holy city, which has been the goal of U.S. presidents of both political parties all along.

Donald Trump has seen the reality of the situation and has backed off his overheated campaign pledge and has decided the status quo isn’t such a bad idea.

Good call, Mr. President.

national news

Cell phone, Mr. President?

I get that Donald J. Trump wants to open up lines of communication between his office and those of other world leaders.

The president’s motives appear to be noble.

But hold on! He’s giving out his personal, private cellphone number to those other leaders? Is that what I’m hearing?

Whoa, Mr. President!

Cellphones aren’t secure. I keep hearing how they’re vulnerable to, um, hacking. People can listen in. Bad people can listen and do terrible things in reaction to what they hear.

And so the president of the United States wants to talk openly, and I presume candidly, with world leaders about the myriad problems facing the world.

https://www.apnews.com/11a48fde81634789b1cc361696693b68

If the president wants to maintain open communications with other leaders, I have an idea. Let ’em call you on the secure line in the Oval Office, or in the Situation Room.

Handing out personal cellphone numbers is fraught, shall we say, with some serious national security concerns. Don’t you think?

And didn’t the president — when he was running for the office — bellow incessantly about all the alleged security breaches created by Hillary Clinton’s use of her personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state?

I am shaking my head.

national news, Uncategorized

The WH shakeup has begun

Mike Dubke is out as White House communications director.

Sean Spicer won’t be meeting face to face as often with the White House media as press secretary.

A fiery former Donald J. Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, might be returning to the inner circle, which reportedly might trigger more departures from the White House.

And all the while, the president of the United States insists that the White House is running like a “fine-tuned machine.” All cylinders are firing as they should. The president hit a “home run,” he said, on his first foreign trip.

I’ll stick with what former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — and one-time GOP presidential rival — said about Trump.

He ran as a “chaos candidate” and is governing as a “chaos president.”

media news, national news

Trump, as POTUS, has nowhere to hide

The Atlantic magazine has published a lengthy article detailing the difficulties facing Donald John Trump.

It goes through a lot of what many of us know already: his missteps, his hiring decisions, his carelessness with classified information and, of course, his international relationships.

Here’s the article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/all-the-kings-men/526980/

It paints a grim picture and suggests that Trump’s presidency is collapsing before our eyes.

Maybe it is. Maybe not.

The most interesting analysis in my mind, though, comes near the end. The Atlantic notes that as a private business executive, Trump could fire people at will; he was the CEO and no one would dare question his authority. As a candidate for the only public office he ever sought, the presidency, he could change the subject when he misspoke or — more likely — revealed some dark spot in his heart.

As president, though, he has nowhere to hide. He must stand front and center for every single thing he does or says.

And, yes, the media are there to watch, to listen and to report his dealings to the world. It’s what the media do.

The president no longer can get away with blaming “fake news” media reports. Every wound from which he suffers has been self-inflicted by someone whose business acumen simply doesn’t translate to political knowledge.

national news, political news

Mueller pick enables Congress, POTUS to get back to work

One of my first takeaways from today’s blockbuster news about the appointment of a special counsel to probe the “Russia thing” suggests that Congress and the president can get back to actual work.

You know … governing!

Robert Mueller is going to lead the investigation into whether Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 election; he’ll look at whether Donald Trump asked former FBI director James Comey to shut down a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Russia connection; he might even find some other things we haven’t even thought of … yet.

You’ll recall that a former special counsel, Kenneth Starr, was tasked initially with examining a real estate deal involving Bill and Hillary Clinton and discovered that the president was having an “inappropriate” relationship with a young White House intern. The rest became history.

Mueller, himself a former FBI director, is an excellent choice to lead this probe. I give Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein high praise for making this choice.

Senators, House members and the president now can get back to arguing over some other things: health care, tax reform, infrastructure, immigration matters, North Korea, Syria, NATO.

We can argue ourselves hoarse over the merits of what Donald Trump wants to do. I don’t mind that debate continuing at full throttle.

This Russia matter and all its tendrils have strangled the government. For his part, Trump has made a mess of just about everything he has touched. Congressional leadership hasn’t acquitted itself much better, either.

Yes, House and Senate committees will continue to examine the “Russia thing” along with whatever Mueller uncovers. Let them pursue their charter as prescribed by congressional rules.

The rest of the House and the Senate — along with the guy who is president of the United States — ought to concentrate more fully on what they were sent to Washington, D.C., to do.

That is to govern.