Category Archives: Donald Trump

Rule of law set for challenge

Here it comes: We’re going to see, more than likely, a supreme test of the notion that “no one is above the law” that Attorney General Merrick Garland keeps reminding us.

The House select 1/6 committee has subpoenaed Donald J. Trump to talk to the committee about all he knows about what happened before, during and after the insurrection. Trump has issued a 14-page response that doesn’t way whether he will honor the summons and talk to the committee.

Congress could cite the ex-president of contempt of Congress. He could be indicted for that. Trump could go to trial. A jury could convict him … all of which happened to former Trump adviser/toadie Steve Bannon, who now is facing a two-year term in a federal prison.

Is Trump on the same plain as the rest of us? Must he face the consequence of prison time if he refuses honor the demands of a duly constituted congressional committee?

Merrick Garland says he must. I believe we are to learn in due course whether The Donald actually dodges this bullet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Trump hits keep coming

Donald J. Trump is clearly the gift that keeps on giving, with every revelation, every new development, every single lie he is caught uttering.

Now comes word that he sought to work out a deal with the National Archives to keep secret information related to his 2016 involvement with Russia during that year’s presidential campaign.

The deal never came through, but the revelation adds more fuel to the inferno that is beginning to consume the former president and his efforts to keep presidential records away from the public … which is the rightful owner of these documents.

Legal experts now say it’s no longer a matter of “if” Trump gets indicted by the Department of Justice, but now is a matter of “when” the attorney general will drop the hammer.

Legal experts: Russia link to Trump documents means it’s a matter of “when, not if” he is indicted (msn.com)

I cannot stop shaking my noggin over this stuff.

It reveals all the things many of us feared the moment Donald Trump took the oath of office to become POTUS, that he had no understanding of the importance of managing high-level communications. He treated all of them as they were his personal property. They aren’t.

Now we have this latest bit of drama.

Ugghh …

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Trump admits guilt … bring it!

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Whoever serves these days as Donald J. Trump’s legal advisers surely must know that they have an imbecile for a client. Why do I say that?

Because … at that rally over the weekend, The Donald took it upon himself to admit to taking documents from the White House and squirreling them away in his glitzy Florida estate. He all but admitted to committing a crime!

Let’s see. I believe that’s what the FBI was seeking to determine when they searched Trump’s home and discovered all those documents. Isn’t that correct?

What’s more, the Donald keeps lying about what transpired when the FBI searched his joint. He suggests it was a “raid.” He implies they forced their way in. He keeps insisting no one knew they were coming. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Oh, and he accuses the FBI of “planting” evidence.

Hah! Didn’t happen, Donald.

Any reputable lawyer in the country would advise their client to shut the hell up, to not talk out loud about a pending criminal case. Maybe The Donald’s legal eagles advised him as such. Maybe he ignored them. The Department of Justice is examining whether The Donald broke the law by taking documents from the White House, some of which were marked “top secret.”

Do I need to remind everyone that a conviction of a crime could bring some prison time to the former POTUS?

Whatever the case, the individuals who have taken on the task of defending the indefensible — the taking of classified documents from the White House — now must understand fully what millions of Americans know already.

The former president of the United States — in the words of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — is a fu**ing moron!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Racist senator earns condemnation

Wow! That was my first reaction to reports of what a U.S. senator said during a Donald J. Trump political rally over the weekend. He sought to label Black Americans as criminals.

It was as blatantly racist a statement as anything I’ve heard since the 1960s.

This came from the pie hole of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, according to Yahoo.com:

As Republicans press crime as an election issue, Tuberville contended Democrats back reparations for descendants of slavery because “they think the people who do crime are owed that.”

“They are not soft on crime,” Tuberville said. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

Holy … crap!

GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville promotes racist narrative about Black people, crime at Trump rally (yahoo.com)

This is an individual elected from a state with a population that is 26% Black. He was elected in 2020 to the U.S. Senate with zero experience in elective politics. He is a former football coach who worked with dozens of Black athletes.

Still, he said this. At a Trump campaign rally. Oh, and get this: The crowd that heard it clapped and cheered the speaker.

“They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed. that.” I just felt the need to repeat that statement. It defies logic. Or humanity. Or anything resembling decent thought from someone elected to the U.S. Senate.

This is part and parcel of what has become of the Republican Party. It saddens me to say this, given that the party once held the key to enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Remember the “party of Abraham Lincoln?” It’s gone, man!

It’s been replaced by and large by something quite different, as exemplified by the mutterings of individuals such as Tommy Tuberville.

Black people are criminals, he says. Democrats demand reparations because those who “do the crime are owed that,” he says.

The English language cannot do justice to what is stirring in my gut at this moment.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Tax returns … still a viable question?

Hey, whatever in the world of high-powered accounting happened to the cries for Donald J. Trump’s tax returns? You remember that, right?

Many of us wondered why Trump wouldn’t release his returns, as presidents and presidential candidates had done since 1976. Trump at first said he would; then he backed off; then he pledged to release them once the taxman completed his audit; then he backed off … again!

Courts have ruled he had to release them. He continues to resist.

Wait a second, though. We’ve been buried up to here with other sorts of finance-related news involving Trump. The New York attorney general has sued the Trump Organization for $250 million, alleging that Trump falsified his net worth to obtain favorable loans.

And then — of course! — we have a myriad of criminal investigations into Trump’s conduct during the 2020 election and immediately after the election that he lost to President Joe Biden.

I remain one of the millions of curious Americans who wants to know:

  • Whether Donald Trump is as rich as he kept bragging about.
  • How much, if anything, he gave to charitable causes.
  • The extent of his foreign business dealings and whether he does business with despicable tyrants in, say, Russia.

Those are three items. You likely have more issues to resolve with this guy.

Trump has defied conventional presidential wisdom at so many levels. The tax return issue is just one of them.

The issue of the tax returns has been eclipsed, or so it appears, by all those other matters involving Trump, The Big Lie, the insurrection, falsifying assets, conspiracy to commit sedition.

Good grief, all those other matters seem to make Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns seem almost … quaint. Actually, though, it isn’t. Trump’s refusal to do what so many previous presidents and candidates for the high office have done speaks mightily of his lack of character.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

‘Gross dereliction of duty’?

Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham have redefined “gross dereliction of duty,” attaching a partisan label to conduct that should defy partisanship.

The two U.S. Republican senators have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of “gross dereliction of duty,” and suggesting he might be impeached on those grounds if the GOP takes control of Congress after the midterm election. They suggest the “illegal immigrant” crisis has become too much to bear.

Hmm. Interesting, yes? Mayorkas has presided over a Cabinet office that has taken charge of arresting and detaining more migrants than ever. I agree that the situation on our southern border needs immediate repair and reform, but impeach Mayorkas? He’s doing his job.

Ted Cruz says DHS chief could be impeached over rise in migrant crossings | The Texas Tribune

As for the redefinition of “gross dereliction of duty,” I want to remind Cruz and Graham that the immediate past president committed a “gross dereliction” of the duty he assumed when he took office in January 2017. The dereliction of duty occurred during the 1/6 assault on our government, when Donald J. Trump did not a damn thing to prevent the attack.

Cruz and Graham gave Trump a pass.

Dereliction of duty? There you have it. Indeed, I could argue that the senators, too, are guilty of dereliction of duty by refusing to make Trump accountable for inciting the insurrection against the government he took an oath to protect.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Unable to understand this change

Make no mistake that I will go to my grave not ever knowing or understanding how a leading politician can speak with such promising rhetoric about political transition only to toss every single word he said four years earlier into the crapper.

Former President Barack H. Obama spoke to the nation the day after Donald J. Trump got elected president in 2016. He spoke glowingly of the president-elect’s commitment to a smooth transition from one administration to the next one. Obama spoke of the message he gleaned from Trump’s remarks the previous evening, about how Trump intends to be president for “all Americans.”

Then it all caved in.

Trump lost his bid for re-election and chose to ignore all the things he had said as he prepared to take office four years earlier. At one level, I wasn’t surprised, given that I learned early in Trump’s political career not to believe a single thing that came out of his mouth.

Then again, the eternal optimist that lurks inside me had hoped that he meant what he said in 2016 as he prepared to take office. Silly me. Barack Obama got fooled, too. As did Hillary Clinton.

All that noble talk about smooth transition was plowed asunder when Trump lost the 2020 election. He has attacked our democratic process in word and — as we witnessed on 1/6 — in deed. That begs a serious question: How do serious-minded American patriots square the words of a man who pledged unity and peaceful transition square that with what he did four years later?

I admit freely to being a bit slow on the uptake on some matters. This must be one of them. Therefore, I’ll just consign my pending visit to the hereafter with an acknowledgment that I do not — I cannot — grasp how this individual lives with himself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Peaceful transition?

I recently had a chance to watch snippets of every presidential concession speech dating back to 1960.

They all had one message in common. Whether the losing presidential candidate lost by a lot or a little, they all spoke of the marvelous element of our democratic process that has made us proud: that we should honor the results of an election, no matter how much it hurts.

Some of the presidential losers lost by landslides or near-landslides: Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, John McCain. They all pledged their support for the men who beat them. Others lost by just a little: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Al Gore, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Hubert Humphrey, Hillary Clinton. They, too, honored the victors by offering their support.

Where am I going with this? One name is missing. As I listened to all the losing presidential candidates, I was struck by the grace and the class all the losing candidates exhibited in that moment of pain.

Concession Speeches: So Hard To Say Goodbye | NBC News – YouTube

Donald J. Trump didn’t exhibit either of those traits after the 2020 election. His refusal to concede that he lost an election has scarred the democratic process he swore an oath to protect and defend.

This individual’s behavior in that moment when defeat was declared will stand in my mind as the glaring testimony to his utter lack of character. It is the kind of behavior that illustrates in graphic detail this man’s complete and absolute unfitness for the very job he occupied for four years.

I have watched along with the rest of the country how he has denigrated the office with his insults and epithets. Many of those incidents individually would be enough to disqualify this man from public office.

I will circle back, though, to The Big Lie he keeps repeating and his refusal to honor the tradition we all — and this hurts to say it — seemingly had taken for granted. Which was that the individual who loses a presidential election concedes with grace, and we move on to the next steward of the nation’s executive branch of government.

Trump’s absence from that list of concessions is unforgivable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Critics of this blog have accused its author — that’s me — of suffering from something called Trump Derangement Syndrome.

I’m not entirely sure I know what it means, other than I gather that critics believe I spend too much time and emotional capital commenting on the actions of the immediate past POTUS.

Please forgive this bit of candor, but a lot of it has to do with Donald J. Trump himself. He keeps thrusting himself into the news. Talking heads keep telling us that Trump is motivated primarily by his insatiable thirst for attention.

That thirst is driving this silly — no, stupid — idea that he will run for president again in 2024. I am not convinced he is going to run but, by golly, he’s going to keep his name in front of our faces for as long as he can. That presence in our national consciousness is going to last until, oh let’s see, when gets indicted, tried and sentenced to time in the slammer.

I don’t know if any of that will happen. I do know, though, that for as long Trump is walking and talking among us — making news along the way — I’ll keep commenting on the things he says and does.

Bear in mind — and perhaps some of you have noticed — that I don’t flail at every single pronouncement that flies out of the former Numbskull in Chief’s trap. I am picking my shots.

Will they still call it Trump Derangement Syndrome? Yeah. Probably.

I’ll stay with it for as long as it matters.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This is how POTUS should respond

At the risk of riling some of the Trumpkin Trolls who read this blog, I want to offer a brief word describing what I believe is an essential difference between the way Joe Biden handles his presidential duties and the way his immediate predecessor handled them.

Hurricane Ian hammered Florida with Category 4-level wind and storm surge. It marched across that state, headed out over water to regain its strength and then pummeled the South Carolina coast with more devastating wind and water.

President Biden’s response? He declared a federal disaster for Florida and well might do the same for South Carolina. He vowed to be there for all of those who suffered from nature’s wrath. Biden made a specific point that Republicans and Democrats alike will be treated with compassion from the government.

OK. How does that compare with how Donald J. Trump handled national tragedies? The wildfires that destroyed thousands of acres in California in 2019 became grist for Trump to lecture the state on how it should manage its forests. He would routinely castigate Democratic officials — who didn’t support him in 2016 — for their failures.

Biden, who didn’t carry either Florida or South Carolina in 2020, did not go there. He is president of all the United States, he reminded us … and he intends to carry out his response to the tragic hurricane accordingly.

There you have it. We elected a president who understands the unwritten job description he must follow.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com