Tag Archives: White House

national news

Stay ‘home,’ Mr. President

Donald J. Trump surely understands the importance of symbolism.

He plasters his name on tall buildings all around the world to symbolize his immense wealth. The rest of us get it, Mr. President. You’re worth a bundle, man.

So, why doesn’t he act a bit more symbolically with regard to the office he occupies and remain in the White House, where he was elected to serve?

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, one of the president’s pals in Congress asked just the other day about his continual forays to that posh resort of his in Florida. Mar-A-Lago has become a sort of surrogate White House. Ernst doesn’t think Trump serves his office well by spending so much time there, enjoying the glittery fruits of his tremendous business success.

I happen to agree, although I want to stipulate something I’ve noted already on this blog. It’s that the president is the president wherever he is. He doesn’t leave any of the power of the office behind when he ventures away from the Oval Office.

However, this particular individual — the 45th president — campaigned as a populist; a friend of the little guy, the working man and woman, the Mom and Pop business owner. His constant jet trips to the glitz and glam of Mar-A-Lago suggest to me that he is more comfortable living the high life than he is in connecting with the rest of the country.

The president has some pretty nice digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Granted, they aren’t as gaudy as his south Florida palace. We pay for it. We maintain it for the president and (hopefully soon) his family. The grounds are immaculate. You can’t beat the home security system, either.

All that said, the president ought to heed the pleading of one of his congressional friends. He can choose to ignore those coming from the rest of us who dislike him.

Sen. Ernst is right. Donald Trump ought to park that that big blue-and-white Boeing 747 for a time and stick around the White House.

It’s the symbolism, Mr. President. Yes, it matters.

political news

Immigrant schools Trump on anthem protocol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_GaDLPUFRU

Ohhh, the irony is so very rich.

There they are: the first family of the United States of America. They’re standing on the Truman Balcony of the White House at the start of the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

The band strikes up the National Anthem. Barron Trump and his mother, first lady Melania Trump, place their hands over their hearts. Then the first lady nudges the right arm of the man to her left, the president, who then places his right hand over his heart.

Why the irony? Well, Donald J. Trump has spoken badly for, oh, the past year or so about immigrants. The illegal immigrants are pouring into the country to commit all manner of crimes, he has said; the legal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, he adds.

So, what about the immigrant standing next to him on the balcony? His third wife is a native of Slovenia; indeed, two of the president’s three wives have come here from foreign lands.

There’s just a fascinating bit of poetry associated with this brief video and I am pleased to see that the first lady is so attuned to the “optics” of these events.

Take note, Mr. President. I hope he thanked his wife.

national news, political news

POTUS signs kid’s hat, then tosses it away … what the … ?

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The annual White House Egg Roll reportedly was in some jeopardy.

They managed to stage the 139th annual event today, drawing the usual crowd of excited children to play on the lawn and “compete” with each other in this delightful extravaganza.

Then something truly weird happened. A kid handed Donald J. Trump his hat, asking the president to sign it for him. The president agreed. He signed the hat — and then tossed it into the crowd! Trump didn’t give the hat back to the youngster.

He did it again, to a second youngster.

There goes the hat

I know this isn’t a huge deal for most of the rest of us. It certainly is, though, to a couple of kids who were excited to have the president of the United States sign their headwear.

I am unaware of what this might say about the president.

It surely cannot be anything good. I guess I’ll just let others draw their own conclusions.

I’ll just stick with “weird.”

national news, political news

Open the White House visitor logs

Transparency has been tossed into the crapper at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

That’s where the president of the United States hangs out for part of the week; his posh Florida resort appears to be where Donald J. Trump’s heart belongs.

But the White House is the people’s house. The president is just staying there. We own the place. You and I do. It’s ours, man.

Which is why the White House visitor logs need to be opened up to public review, as it was done during the years the Barack Obama family was living there. The White House announced that those logs will be kept secret. The White House brass contends there’s some issue with national security.

Closed logs anger watchdogs

As The Hill reported: “‘It’s disappointing that the man who promised to ‘drain the swamp’ just took a massive step away from transparency by refusing the release the White House visitor logs that the American people have grown accustomed to accessing over the last six years,’ Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement.

“Bookbinder said the records ‘provide indispensable information about who is seeking to influence the president.'”

Drain the swamp, eh?

The swamp isn’t drained in the least. It remains as infested with special interests and well-heeled fat cats as always. The public has a right to know who is calling on the president, or on his senior staff. The public pays the bill for that big ol’ house and as its landlords, the public has every right to know who’s darkening its doors.

national news, political news

It’s the messenger, man, not the message

The White House issued the following statement to commemorate Sexual Abuse Awareness Month:

“At the heart of our country is the emphatic belief that every person has unique and infinite value. We dedicate each April to raising awareness about sexual abuse and recommitting ourselves to fighting it. Women, children, and men have inherent dignity that should never be violated.

“According to the Department of Justice, on average there are more than 300,000 instances of rape or other sexual assault that afflict our neighbors and loved ones every year. Behind these painful statistics are real people whose lives are profoundly affected, at times shattered, and who are invariably in need of our help, commitment, and protection.

“As we recognize National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, we are reminded that we all share the responsibility to reduce and ultimately end sexual violence. As a Nation, we must develop meaningful strategies to eliminate these crimes, including increasing awareness of the problem in our communities, creating systems that protect vulnerable groups, and sharing successful prevention strategies.”

That is a perfectly fine statement about a horrific problem in this country, indeed the world.

The problem with the message, though, is the messenger. Donald J. Trump is now president of the United States. He lives in the White House and runs the government that has just issued this appropriate and moving statement.

His record, though, calls just about every aspect of this statement into question. Does the president really and truly believe it? He didn’t write it, but it was issued under his name.

Do you remember during the 2016 presidential campaign that “Access Hollywood” video that went viral, the one where candidate Trump boasted about grabbing women by their private parts? Do you recall how he told Billy Bush how it’s OK to just start kissing women?

This man admitted to committing sexual abuse. Voters elected him anyway.

Rest assured. None of this individual’s personal history is going to go unnoticed, particularly when the White House issues statements that — in effect — condemn the boss’s conduct before he moved into the people’s house.

national news, political news

Uh, Mr. POTUS? Photo ops are meant to convey something

Dear Mr. President,

That was some stunt you pulled today.

You called the media into the White House to watch you sign a couple of executive orders concerning international trade enforcement.

Then one of the reporters fired off a question about Michael Flynn. Your response? You turned tail and ran from the room. Why didn’t you stay long enough to sign the damn EOs?

This was supposed to be a positive photo op for you and your struggling administration. Then someone poses a tricky question — and you provide yet another kind of photo op, one that won’t play nearly as positively as the one you intended.

It was fascinating to watch the vice president acknowledge immediately what was going on and how it would look.

You probably don’t care what I think — given that I live out here in Trump Country, but I have a decidedly different view of the job you’re doing from the neighbors on my street. I’ll tell you anyway.

Every time you perform stunts like the one you performed today, you send chilling messages that there really and truly might be a flame under all the smoke being generated by that Russian hacking story.

We know that you gave Gen. Flynn the boot as your national security adviser because of questions swirling about his Russia relationships. I actually think you made the right call there, despite my belief that Gen. Flynn shouldn’t have held the post in the first place.

You have photo ops and then there are photo ops.

Mr. President, you need to answer the questions. Definitively, with clarity and precision — if you are able to dispel the chilling notion among many of us that there might be something to this Russian “collusion” story.

national news, political news

Will the ‘system’ swallow POTUS whole?

This fantasy keeps ricocheting around my noggin. Here’s how it goes.

Donald J. Trump sold himself as a no-nonsense, kick-butt business mogul who brooked no foolishness from anyone. Then he got elected president and learned that “I alone” cannot repair what he said is wrong with the country.

He set out to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act and then ran smack into the buzzsaw otherwise known as the House Freedom Caucus, whose members hate the cooked-up alternative to the ACA. Democrats hate it, too, as much as they hate the president.

If the ACA repeal fails today, does that signal the start of a string of failures for a man who told us over and over that he never seemed to fail at anything?

What, then, happens when he cannot enact tax reform, or get the wall built on our southern border, or institute an infrastructure rebuilding program?

What happens if he can’t “destroy ISIS” all by himself? What happens if he keeps getting stern resistance from those on the far right — who don’t trust him anyway — as well as those on the left who are still steamed that he got elected president in the first place?

My fantasy is that Trump might decide the fight ain’t worth it. He’ll call Vice President Pence into the Oval Office and tell the veep, “Mike, take it away. It’s all  yours, my man. I’m going to take Melania and Barron back to New York and we can vacation to our hearts’ content at Mar-a-Lago and no one will give a crap about how much it costs. Besides, this house in D.C. isn’t nearly as nice as my digs in Florida. I’m outta here.”

Yes, that’s why I call it a fantasy. However, one never knows.

legal news

Trump now relying on others to prove it?

White House press flack Sean Spicer says Donald Trump is “confident” that Justice Department officials will prove what the president has asserted.

Which is that former President Barack Obama committed a crime by ordering a wiretap on Trump’s campaign offices in New York City.

The president made that scurrilous allegation in a tweet several days ago. He hasn’t produced a scintilla of evidence to back it up. DOJ is now looking for proof. Spicer says Justice will find it.

Here’s my question: If the president had the proof when he fired off that tweet, why didn’t he produce it at the time he made the accusation?

Let me think. Oh, I know! That’s because he didn’t have it! He doesn’t have it now! The Justice Department won’t find it, either.

This is yet another game of verbal gymnastics that Trump’s spokesman is playing with the media that Trump despises.

If the president had the goods he should have produced them long before now.

national news

Meanwhile, there’s this Kellyanne Conway matter

Russia dominates the news. Then we get questions about Donald Trump’s tweets and reckless accusations.

The White House then decides to sweep away complaints about senior policy adviser Kellyanne Conway blurting out a free ad for one of Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing. She did so on TV a few weeks ago, prompting yet another tempest over whether the Trump administration is doing enough to separate itself from its myriad business interests around the world.

Conway well could have broken a federal law that prohibits government officials from promoting private business.

Isn’t that what senior policy adviser Conway did when she took up for Ivanka’s product line after a major department store chain decided to stop selling it?

And … um … isn’t that a violation of federal law?

The Office of Government Ethics reportedly is concerned that the White House has decided against doing anything about Conway’s free ad for Ivanka’s products.

Will that get the president’s attention? Will it prompt him — at the very least — take Conway to the proverbial “woodshed” and give her the scolding she deserves?

OGE director Walter Shaub, moreover, is concerned that the president seems to think White House employees are exempt from those laws.

Um, no Mr. President. Not true.

Someone, somehow, has to get it through the president’s thick skull that ethics rules apply to all government employees. White House staffers all work for you and me and as such they are subject to precisely the same rules as other federal employees.

national news, political news

How would Hillary have fared?

I’ve resisted the temptation to ask this question out loud, but I no longer can contain myself.

How would Hillary Rodham Clinton made the transition from private citizen to president of the United States?

I cannot in my wildest imagination think that she would have encountered the problems that have plagued Donald J. Trump, the guy who beat her in the 2016 presidential election.

Russian connection? Inability to find qualified individuals to serve in the Cabinet? Contradictions between what the president says and what he or she means?

None of those issues would be dogging her.

Yes, she’d have her share of issues to settle. The foundation matter; that e-mail controversy; perhaps even Benghazi would continue to fester. Republicans no doubt would ensure those troubles would drag her down.

I am not going to spend too much energy ruminating over this query. I likely won’t have another word to say about how Hillary would have done.

I’m just perplexed at this moment in history at the absolute clumsiness and lack of discipline the president and his senior staff are exhibiting as they seek to get their hands on the complex machinery that operates this federal government of ours.

Hillary Clinton means a lot of things to different people.

She isn’t clumsy. She knows how to govern. She would have zero difficulty assembling her team.

But … we won’t ever know any of that with absolute certainty.

In the meantime, the soap opera at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. continues.