Tag Archives: 2016 election

national news

McCain speaks truth to … fraud

U.S. Sen. John McCain remains in strong voice and for that I am grateful.

Donald John Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on his re-election as Russia’s president. The message didn’t go down well with the stricken Republican senator from Arizona, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer.

McCain issued a statement that read in part, according to The Hill: In a statement, McCain called Trump’s phone call to Putin an insult to “every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future.”

“An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” McCain said.

Did the president discuss with Putin the questions about Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election? Did he mention a word to him about his support of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad? Did he bring up the murder of journalists or the poisoning of a former Soviet spy and his daughter?

Oh, no! He wouldn’t go there. Instead, he “congratulated” Putin, despite some serious reporting about election fraud.

McCain said more about Trump’s call to Putin: “And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”

Trump is so very tough on American law enforcement officials, on critics here at home and even on allies abroad. Yet he soft-pedals his comments on Putin?

Shameful.

national news

Hillary tries to walk it back … good luck with that

Try as she might, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to do the impossible. As my late friend and colleague Claude Duncan used to say, “You can’t unhonk the horn.”

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, went to India and told an audience that those who voted for her came from more economically progressive and advanced states; those who voted for Donald Trump were, um, less progressive and advanced.

Oh, boy. You can’t go there, Hillary Clinton.

She has been criticized roundly for her remarks. I am joining in that criticism. Yes, she received my vote in 2016 and she would get it again were she to run against the guy who beat her.

Her “explanation” rings hollow. She said she didn’t intend to offend anyone with her remarks. Clinton wrote on Facebook: “I meant no disrespect to any individual or group. And I want to look to the future as much as anybody.”

Look to the future? Sure she does. I take that statement to mean she wants to set her remarks aside and doesn’t want to keep explaining herself.

“No, it’s not helpful at all,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said on “Fox News Sunday,” when she was asked to comment on Clinton’s comments.  “In fact, my friend Hillary Clinton is wrong.”

According to The Hill: Clinton also implied that women who cast a ballot for Trump did so due to “ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

“As much as I hate the possibility, and hate saying it, it’s not that crazy when you think about our ongoing struggle to reach gender balance — even within the same household. I did not realize how hard it would hit many who heard it,” Clinton said in her explanation.

Now she realizes it. I’m glad she sought to clarify what she meant to convey. Still, I am having difficulty trying to separate the intent from the spoken word.

national news

Trump protests too much

Does it make sense to you that someone who denies wrongdoing should keep firing broadsides at those who are investigating allegations of misbehavior? Donald Trump is at virtual war with Robert Mueller.

Trump is the president of the United States. Mueller is a special counsel assigned to look into whether the president did something wrong.

The president denies in one breath that he did anything wrong. In the next breath he rakes Mueller over the coals, calling his probe a “witch hunt” and assorted other pejoratives.

Mueller is examining the president on several fronts. He was selected by the Department of Justice to look into allegations that Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russians who interfered in our 2016 presidential election. He is trying to determine whether there is any obstruction of justice efforts aimed at blocking the investigation. Mueller also is now looking at the Trump Organization’s business dealings with Russian interests.

Trump is howling. He is bellowing. He is tweeting his rage at Mueller.

Why is the president so angry? Why is he so enraged that Mueller — a former FBI director and by most people’s estimation a stand-up, first-class, meticulous lawyer — is doing the job he was charged to do?

Mueller is keeping his mouth shut. He is not talking publicly about his investigation. He is acting professionally. He has assigned his team of legal eagles to pore over the mountains of data they have collected.

Trump is doing quite the opposite. He is yapping, yammering and yowling daily — if not damn near hourly — via Twitter about Mueller’s probe. Is that a logical response of someone who is in the clear? I don’t believe it is.

It would seem more appropriate for the president to do two things: Keep his trap shut and then give the special counsel every bit of information he seeks.

Instead, every Trump tweet or public statement about Mueller only heightens the suspicion that he well might have something to hide. He might say he is innocent of wrongdoing. The president’s actions, though, suggest something quite different.

legal news

Trump lawyer pours gas on the flame

John Dowd is not serving his client well.

Dowd, a lawyer, represents Donald John Trump. Dowd now is calling for an end to an investigation led by another lawyer, special counsel Robert Mueller, who’s looking deeply into issues involving Trump, his campaign, his transition to the presidency and the presidency itself.

Now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fired deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a key player in Mueller’s probe, Dowd says it’s time for Mueller to wrap up this investigation.

If I were to put myself in Mueller’s shoes I might be asking: What in the world is Dowd trying to hide? Why does he want me to end an investigation that is growing more complicated by the day, if not the hour?

Thus, in my view Dowd has done his client a disservice. Oh, but then there is this: Donald Trump wants the investigation to end as well. He’s called it a “witch hunt,” which it isn’t. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who selected Mueller after Sessions recused himself, said Mueller has done nothing wrong and that his probe should continue.

At issue, of course, is the “Russia thing,” and whether the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russians seeking to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s Republican leadership has said there is “no collusion,” which prompted Trump to declare that “Congress” has found nothing wrong. Oops! He didn’t say that the GOP leaders on the committee have drawn that conclusion.

Oh, but the Mueller probe has many more trails to explore, many more leads to follow.

He’s a long way from finishing his work.

John Dowd needs to pipe down and let the special counsel do his job, get to the finish line and if he finds nothing there — as Trump keeps insisting — he needs to tell us all himself.

International news, national news, political news

Press flack keeps insulting the public’s intelligence

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fielded a direct question today from a member of the White House press corps: Is Russia a friend or foe of the United States?

Her answer defies all logic and it insults the intelligence of Americans across the board.

Sanders said “it is up to the Russians to decide” if they are going to be friendly or unfriendly toward the United States. Such a goofy response causes many of us out here to say: What the … is she talking about?

I need to remind Sanders what her boss, Donald John Trump, used to say about “identifying our enemies.” While running for president, Trump excoriated President Barack Obama for refusing to identify “Muslim terrorists” by name. Obama’s response was that we are not at war with Islam, but we are at war with those who are mass murderers of Muslims.

Why, then, does the current president identify Russia as a supreme foe of this country? Why does his press flack sing from the White House song book that refuses to identify our adversary — by name!

The Russians have all but declared war on our electoral system. They have sown discord, dismay and discontent among Americans, many of whom have lost total and unvarnished faith in our nation’s election system.

The Russians and their president, Vladimir Putin, are not our friends. Putin is a trained spook. He once ran the Soviet Union’s spy agency. He is, in the words of former Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, “a killer.” Putin has sanctioned the murder of journalists and anyone who dissents from his public policy.

This man is a friend? It is up to the Russians to “decide” if they are our friend?

Listen up, young lady: You insult our intelligence constantly by spouting such idiocy.

national news, political news

By all means, welcome back, Katrina Pierson

She’s back. Dallas resident Katrina Pierson is going to return to the presidential campaign trail on behalf of Donald John Trump Sr.

I am delighted to see her return to the partisan battle.

Pierson is a long-time Texas TEA Party activist, which is where she earned her spurs before becoming a senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Here, though, is the real reason why I want to see Pierson back in the fray. She is prone to making truly bizarre statements.

Such as when she blamed President Obama for starting the Afghan War — in 2001. Oops! That fight began on President Bush’s watch, about a month or so after the 9/11 attack on New York City and Washington, D.C.

Or the time she blamed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the death of U.S. Army Capt. Humayan Khan, whose parents were strong supporters of President Obama; remember how they stood before the 2016 Democratic convention to excoriate the GOP nominee, Trump. Oh, darn! She must have forgot that Capt. Khan died in Iraq in 2004, five years before Obama and Clinton assumed power.

So, I’m all excited to see Katrina Pierson return to the presidential campaign trail.

She’s good for plenty of laughs. We’ll need to keep our sense of humor when 2020 rolls around to keep from going insane!

political news

GOP punched in the gut with this apparent loss

They haven’t called it yet, but the Republican Party is likely to get tied up in knots over this loss of a key congressional election.

Conor Lamb leads Rick Saccone (pictured) by a few hundred votes. My hunch is that they’ll recount the ballots cast in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.

Lamb has declared victory; Saccone isn’t conceding anything just yet. Saccone had better get his concession speech ready.

This one is a serious rejection of the nation’s top Republican, Donald John Trump, who spoke (more or less) for Saccone in the waning days of the campaign. He went to western Pennsylvania and spent more than an hour talking about himself, saying damn near nothing about the guy he was there to endorse.

Hey, that’s what narcissists do. Isn’t that right?

As for Lamb, he isn’t calling his apparent victory a referendum on Trump. I’ll disagree with that one, young man. I believe it is.

Trump won the district in 2016 by more than 20 percentage points. The 18th had been trending Republican for years. It’s previous representative is a Republican who had to resign because of a sex scandal.

So, it’s fair to wonder: Does this apparent Democratic victory signal a trend that will carry through the year in the midterm election?

Republicans had better believe it will. My guess is that they have just received a major punch in the gut.

As Politico reports: “During a closed-door conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club, House Republican leaders said that Tuesday’s special election, where Democrat Conor Lamb is narrowly leading, could portend a monster Democratic year.”

If that “monster” awakens fully, then I believe we are heading for a period of extreme political tumult.

International news, national news

CIA to get a professional spook to lead it

Donald Trump has made an unusual and potentially excellent personnel decision at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The president has nominated Gina Haspel to be the CIA’s new director, replacing Mike Pompeo, who’s moving from that job to become the next secretary of state.

Why is this such an important selection? Some recent CIA heads have come from the political arena. I think of Pompeo (former congressman), Leon Panetta (another former congressman), Porter Goss (still another ex-congressman); others have come from he military, such as Michael Hayden (Air Force general), David Petraeus (Army general) and Stansfield Turner (Navy admiral). They all had varying degrees of success and failure.

Haspel is a career spook. She spent many of her three decades in the CIA as a undercover agent, a spy.

Haspel — the agency’s deputy director — knows the CIA culture. She has lived it.

This nominee isn’t without some problem. She reportedly has been involved in the torture of terror suspects held captive. U.S. Sen. John McCain — a former Vietnam War prisoner who knows a thing or two about torture — has called on Senate committee questioners to probe deeply into Haspel’s involvement in that practice.

That all said, I believe Haspel’s nomination is a potentially huge selection for the CIA.

I like the idea that she has field experience as a deep-cover agent. She knows the business of intelligence-gathering and counter-intelligence. None of this experience has anything to do with her being the first woman ever nominated to lead the CIA.

We’re still in the midst of open warfare against terrorist organizations. We need a well-run CIA to operate at full throttle in this effort.

Moreover, and make no mistake about this issue, we need a CIA director who is willing to speak independently and candidly about issues that well might run counter to the issues put forward by the individual who nominated her.

Pompeo has challenged Donald Trump’s apparent belief that Russia didn’t meddle in our 2016 presidential election. My sincere hope is that Gina Haspel will endorse the view expressed by the entire array of intelligence officials who have reached the same conclusion as Mike Pompeo.

It’s vital that our intelligence community work overtime to seek ways to prevent Russians — or any other foreign adversary with similar capability — from future meddling.

International news

Welcome to center stage, Mike Pompeo

Can there be a more complicated set of circumstances awaiting the next secretary of state?

Donald Trump tweets the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He tweets it, I’m tellin’ ya. Tillerson said he doesn’t know why he was canned. The president then said he’s going to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to be the next top diplomat.

Oh … and this is occurring while the United States is beginning to prepare for a potentially historic summit between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Tillerson today thanks everyone under the sun for the opportunity to serve as secretary of state. Well, almost everyone. He doesn’t thank Trump. Um, I’m betting Trump and Tillerson aren’t going to talk much to each other going forward.

Pffeww!!

I’m worn out — and I’m out here in the Flyover Country peanut gallery.

Pompeo also happens to one of those intelligence experts who believes the Russians meddled in our 2016 presidential election. He has said so on the record. He joins a distinguished list of officials: the director of national intelligence, the head of the National Security Agency, the president’s national security adviser (who well could be the next one out the door). They’ve all said the same thing: The Russians did it and they all contradict the idiocy spouted by the president, that if Vladimir Putin says he didn’t do it, then that’s good enough.

I sincerely hope someone on on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must vote to confirm Pompeo, asks him directly — once more — whether he still believes the Russians meddled in our election.

And with equal sincerity, I hope the Senate wastes little time in getting Pompeo confirmed. He’s got a full plate waiting for him when he takes over.

I mean — crap! — he’s got to prepare the president for this summit with Kim Jong Un. I’ll also have to hope Donald Trump will listen to what the new guy has to say.

national news

GOP calls it: No collusion with Russians

THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

Where do you suppose the above message came from?

Why, none other than Donald John Trump Sr., 45th president of the United States, who fired off the tweet earlier today.

Trump left out a key provision of what the House Intel Committee has declared. He didn’t mention that the findings come from the Republican majority on the panel.

The GOP members of the committee, chaired by Devin Nunes of California, have issued a partisan statement that, shall we say, isn’t shared by the Democrats who also serve on the committee.

So, what the hell is the point here? It surprises not a single person with any knowledge and/or interest in this “Russia thing” that Intelligence Committee Republicans would reach this conclusion.

Nunes has been colluding with the Trump campaign and with the Trump administration from the get-go to subvert the committee’s search for the truth behind allegations that the campaign conspired with Russian hackers to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome.

The House panel’s work has been politicized from the beginning.

The GOP members want the investigation to end. Democrats want it to continue.

To be honest, no one on the outside can draw any conclusions about what the Trump campaign might have done. Committee Republicans say it’s over.

Here’s a thought. Let’s allow special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to reach its own conclusion. Perhaps his probe will end up in the same place. To be honest, I would rather hear the “no collusion” verdict from Mueller, given the dysfunction that has infected the House Intelligence Committee from the beginning of its investigation.

Mueller has a lot of ground to cover. It involves business dealings, obstruction of justice and, oh yes, whether the Russians actually meddled in our 2016 electoral process.

House Republican Intelligence Committee members say there’s no evidence of collusion? That’s their view. It’s not necessarily the view of others who also are up to their armpits in a search for the truth behind this sticky, sordid mess.