Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news

J.D. Vance: ‘Never Trumper’ runs with Trump

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J.D. Vance’s decision to run with Donald Trump is an eye-opener to be sure.

The freshman U.S. senator from Ohio — whose public service career spans the two years he has served in the Senate — once called himself an irrevocable “never Trumper.” He sounded pretty solid when he made that declaration in front of TV cameras.

Now he’s in Trump’s camp. All the way, he indicates. So, Trump chose him to run as VP on a GOP president ticket led — for the third straight election cycle — by Donald Trump.

It’s not that the GOP field of VPOTUS hopefuls lacked candidates who at one time or another spoke ill of the presidential nominee. So did Sen. Marco Rubio, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Tim Scott. They were passed over for Vance.

I don’t know what to make of this selection. If Trump follows past patterns, he’ll sing Vance’s praises until Vance says or does something that displeases Trump. Then he’ll become the “worst human being ever to walk the Earth” …. or words to that effect.

Today’s odds suggest Trump is going to win the presidency. I am not going place that bet just yet. We still have some time to go. President Biden has his own convention to get through. He still has time to sharpen his daggers. Yes, he’s got that assassination attempt hanging over his temptation to resume recounting all the lies, the criminal activity for which Trump has been convicted and truckloads of negativity that accompany Trump wherever he goes.

Trump also reportedly is going to speak to the GOP convention to propose a theme of unity. I am going to hold my breath on that one. I do not expect him to follow the theme he is going to set.

What the hell … he might not even find unity between himself and the fellow he chose to run with him!

national news

Time for ‘unity’ … do ya think?

Word out of Donald J. Trump’s campaign headquarters is that the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee is re-writing his acceptance speech.

Reports say he is going to seek to strike a theme of national “unity” in the wake of what we all saw unfold in Butler, Pa., over the weekend.

A gunman opened fire on Trump, grazing his right ear with a bullet. Another man died while protecting his family from the gunfire, two more bystanders were seriously injured … and the Secret Service killed the shooter where he stood with his rifle.

Trump issued a statement immediately after being transported for treatment of his injury. He spoke of the need to stand as one nation and to work to quell the violence that too often is a result of heated political rhetoric.

On Thursday night he will stand before the nation, accept his party’s nomination and reportedly will deliver his unification remarks.

For the ever-lovin’ life of me, I hope the man is sincere, that he means what he says that he will do his part to cool the atmospherics that surround this political season.

President Biden, his opponent in the election, has said the same thing, calling on the nation to step back and to reflect on a fundamental tenet of American politics. It is that we can differ strongly on issues but that we’re all still Americans, we all love the country and that we are not each other’s “enemy.”

Yes, I oppose Donald Trump’s election. I remain grateful and glad that he didn’t suffer a more serious injury from the moron who opened fire.

Now we will get to measure just how much — if at all — this incident might have changed him.

national news

Political violence ‘has no place’

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Politicians of every imaginable stripe and conviction are saying the same thing tonight in the wake of an incident at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa.

Political violence “has no place” in our system of government and politicking, they have said.

Trump spoke today at an outdoor rally. Then he flinched, grabbed at his right ear and sank to the ground. The Secret Service detail assigned to protect the former president were on him in an instant, shielding him from further harm.

Medical personnel rushed Trump to a center where he was treated for what looked like minor injuries to his ear and possibly the right side of his face. The Secret Service issued a statement declaring the former POTUS to be “safe” and “doing fine.”

For that we all should be relieved.

A shooter reportedly is dead. Eyewitnesses reported hearing several noises that sounded like gunshots. The district attorney then announced the authorities are treating this incident as an “assassination attempt.”

Now comes the difficult part of this commentary. How do we stop the kind of hateful rhetoric we’ve been hearing on the campaign trail? Too many speakers have spoken of doing violence to political protesters. They have lamented the presence of protests, even though the Constitution protects such activity as legitimate free speech.

I would advise Donald Trump himself to take stock of what he has said on the stump and wish for all I can that he cease the kind of rhetoric he has bellowed.

This incident, I fear, is a consequence of the deep divisions that have fractured this great nation.

Joe Biden, national news

‘Vote shaming’ has commenced

There appears to be a tide of “vote shaming” that is swelling across the land as Democrats are now rallying behind their presumptive presidential nominee.

We now are hearing it more loudly and clearly than at any time during the past three presidential cycles. A vote for Donald J. Trump for president is going to relegate the presidency and the nation into a spiral from which neither can recover.

And it is to the ever-lasting shame of those who today remain dedicated to casting their presidential vote for a convicted felon, an admitted philanderer, a man found liable for rape and an individual who admits to groping women.

Democrats are ramping up their message machine to cast shame and embarrassment on the MAGA cultists and the Republican Party leadership who continue to back a man who has been shown to be a fraud, someone who isn’t even close to being the smartest businessman in the room. Indeed, as President Biden has been saying, Trump has filed for bankruptcy “six times, even for a casino” in which had invested. “I didn’t know that was possible,” Biden has said.

President Biden and the Democrats are making Donald Trump the issue in their battle to keep him away from the Oval Office.

They damn sure should make Trump the No. 1 issue in this campaign.

But here we are, wringing our hands over whether Joe Biden is too old and too mentally infirm to run for president. I am teetering on this issue myself and I am not comfortable admitting that. However, you may count me as one American patriot who will gladly cast my ballot for Joe Biden if the choice happens to be Donald Trump.

Those who are standing behind a moral reprobate who is now a convicted felon, someone who embraces tyrants over small-d democrats, well … you deserve the shame you are getting.

Joe Biden

My mission: defeat Trump!

OK, kids. Here comes the latest proclamation from High Plains Blogger, which is that my public policy mission in life is to defeat Donald John Trump and end forever this reprobate’s lust for political power.

How does that happen? Beats me. I have this forum. I intend to light it up with every known lie, defamatory epithet, bizarre pronouncement that has flown out of this megalomaniacal moron’s piehole. I am going to remind readers of this blog that this POTUS wannabe has been convicted of multiple felonies!

Trump is a tangible, existential threat to our way of life, to our democratic system of governance, to our existence as the world’s pre-eminent nation.

I am going to get grief for this declaration from critics who accuse me of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

You know what? I admit that I do! Bring it, MAGA cultists!

I am concerned about whether President Biden is able to carry that message forward on our behalf. And, no, I do not believe he is incapacitated. I fear that the rumor mongering is going to overtake his candidacy. He might be unable to shake loose the political hyenas who have gripped him in their jaws.

Who should replace him as the Democrats’ standard bearer? I don’t have a clue. I do know this: Whoever emerges at the top of the Democratic ticket will have my support over the former Dipsh** in Chief who continues to masquerade as a Republican.

And, yes, that support extends to President Joe Biden should he stay in this race for its duration.

Joe Biden

Stop the armchair diagnoses!

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Everyone’s a doctor, a scientist, someone with inside knowledge on what makes total strangers tick.

You hear it especially when a prominent individual is forced to answer questions about his or her mental acuity. The most prominent person on Earth, President Biden, is facing those questions these days. He endured that hideous debate performance the other evening and now is being pressured to drop out of his race for re-election to the presidency.

Biden says he ain’t going to do it. He says he plans to soldier on. He says only he can defeat Donald J. Trump, which he did four years ago. A whole host of things now work in his favor: Trump’s convictions on felony counts; the nation’s economic revival; Trump’s continuing blather about The Big Lie; Biden’s ability to rally international support against the immoral Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Then the 81-year-old president stumbled badly in that debate against the consummate liar.

I’ll lay out my bias for you. Biden is not diminished to where he cannot do the job to which we elected him. Trump is patently unfit at any level one can imagine for the job he seeks. I base my assertions about Biden on what I have witnessed, albeit from a distance. I concluded long before he won the 2016 election that Trump’s professional experience and his personal proclivities render him unfit for public office.

I am going to hang with the president until he decides all by himself whether he wants to keep fighting for his job … and fighting for you and me.

national news

Trump: luckiest pol … ever!

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Donald J. Trump is vying for the unofficial title of luckiest politician of all time.

Ponder this for a moment. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016 and President Obama sought to nominate Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS vacancy. The Senate’s premier obstructionist, GOP leader Mitch McConnell, intervened, saying that Obama didn’t have the right to nominate anyone in an election year. McConnell blocked Garland’s nomination hoping that Trump would win in 2016. Trump won in what will go down as the greatest political fluke in US history.

Then the new POTUS named three justices to the court.

Together, along with three other right-wing justices, they have determined that POTJSes have immunity against prosecution for crimes committed while performing their official duties. Trump already has been convicted of 34 felony counts, but that doesn’t stop him from running again.

Trial judges down the line are now hamstrung by the high court’s immunity ruling, possibly enabling Trump to run out the clock and hope — and man, this pains me to write this — that he wins the 2024 election … which would doom any chance of any conviction on any of the remaining trials.

That the presumptive GOP nominee is even in a position to win the next election baffles me beyond all measure. It is stunning in the extreme. This guy is without question the most immoral reprobate ever to seek high political office.

Yet there he is, riding this god-awful wave of good luck possibly right back into the White House, the one place on Earth where he never should be seen again.

Go … figure!

national news, political news

How can GOP go through this change?

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Never, not ever in a zillion years, will I understand what has become of the modern Republican Party.

It has gone from being a party that prided itself on moral rectitude, on so-called “family values” and on insisting that character matters in selecting candidates for our cherished public offices to a cult-following mob of miscreants who tie their hay wagon to the heels of a man named Donald John Trump.

Trump stood before us this week and launched into a never-ending tirade of lies that will not draw a single rebuke from what passes as leadership within the once-Grand Old Party.

His brazenness defies logic.

I’ve already discussed briefly the abysmal performance turned in by President Biden. However, I am not going to join the amen chorus calling on him to step aside.

I am, however, going to call attention to the moral decline of the Republican Party. For the third presidential election cycle in a row, the GOP is nominating a convicted felon, an admitted sexual assailant, a serial philanderer, someone who has been found liable in a court of law for the rape of a woman.

There once was a time when the parties sought to nominate the best among us for our nation’s highest office. Donald Trump represents the worst of us.

If we Americans are so damn stupid to give this guy the keys to the White House once again, then we are in far worse condition as a nation than I ever thought possible.

political news

Stakes are um … huge!

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One week out and I am trying to recall the last time I looked forward to a presidential debate with such trepidation.

I cannot remember when that occurred. Maybe it never did.

President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump will go toe-to-toe next week in the first of two planned joint appearances.

Biden and Trump are running neck-and-neck. Why is that? That’s beyond me. However, the polling suggests a photo finish this election cycle.

Here is my hope for a debate outcome.

My hope is that President Biden brings his “A” game. That he remains cool, calm and collected. That he reminds viewers of what lies ahead if voters are dumb enough to send the former numbskull in chief back to the Oval Office. That he reminds us that we cannot possibly elect convicted felon to the nation’s most glorious public office. That he tells us of the existential threat to our democracy if Trump is able to give Russian goon Vladimir Putin a free hand in his immoral invasion of Ukraine.

And that he just lets Trump zoom into orbit with his nonsensical rants about The Big Lie and how much “love” was shown during the violent assault on our Capitol on Jan. 6.

This debate could be the game changer that many of us hope occurs.

crime news

Does ex-POTUS want prison time?

It is striking to listen to the bellicose blathering of the blowhard who once served as our commander in chief.

He’s been convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felony counts. Donald Trump continues to insist he’s innocent of any wrongdoing. He says the jury was rigged. The trial was a sham. The judge is a crook.

Now … why is this important? Because in about a month, the same judge who presided in NYC over the hush money trial is going to hand down a sentence. It might include probation. It might include some time behind bars.

The judge is Juan Merchan, who’s thought to be a meticulous jurist. One of the things I’ve always heard about sentencing procedures is that judges look for contrition among criminal defendants. They look for some semblance of ownership that the defendant did something wrong.

Judge Merchan isn’t getting any of that from this defendant. He’s getting insults, invective, epithets and threats of violent reaction.

All of this makes me wonder if Donald John Trump actually is inviting some prison time.

Don’t you know that July 11 is going to be an extremely big day.