Tag Archives: 2016 election

national news

Still no sign of national unity under Trump

It has been a year since the nation was stunned by the results of its most recent presidential election.

The candidate who won that bitter contest, Donald J. Trump, made a solemn vow to unify the nation, to bring us all together, to bind the wounds that tore us apart … blah, blah, blah.

That’s what is has been: so much blather.

One year after that historic election, we are as divided as ever. Maybe more so.

Has the president delivered on his pledge? Obviously not. What’s worse is to ask: Has the president really tried to deliver? The answer to that is just as obvious. No!

Trump continues to play strictly and exclusively to his base, the shrinking core of voters who stand with him no matter what. You see it in his immigration stance, his views on environmental protection, his hideous tolerance of bigotry (see his response to the Charlottesville riot), his “America first” rhetoric.

A president who took office with zero political capital to spend has acted as if he had it in spades. Trump continues to ignore the numbers, which tell us that he got nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Yes, he won the Electoral College — and was duly elected president.

However, the man who pledged to be the president for all Americans has gone out of his way since his election to be anything but what he promised to be.

This division didn’t start with Trump. Barack Obama also presided over a divided nation, as did George W. Bush before him, and Bill Clinton before that.

Still, when a president takes office promising explicitly to do something, one should expect him to follow suit.

Donald Trump has failed.

political news

Is a political wave developing out there?

What do we make of the Democrats’ big wins for governor in New Jersey in Virginia?

OK, I’ll now lay out for you my extreme bias on the matter … as if you’re going to be surprised.

Phil Murphy’s win in New Jersey and Ralph Northam’s victory in Virginia sang to me. I was happy to see what I believe might be a wholesale rejection of Donald J. Trump’s effort to remake the Republican Party in his own seedy, isolationist, nativist image.

The president has hijacked the Republican Party. A man with zero political activity in his professional background ascended to the world’s most exalted office in 2016.

Republicans are reeling

Republicans now have to deal with the president’s lack of accomplishment as his first year in office approaches. GOP prospects for enacting “tax reform” now appear to be in serious jeopardy.

What’s more, Republicans now are beginning to lament out loud that the 2018 midterm election for both houses of Congress bodes grimly for their chances of retaining control of the legislative branch of government.

To which I say … cry me a river.

I am not the least bit concerned about Republicans’ political prospects. Given that we all have our bias, I’ll lay out my own.

I want Democrats to do well next year to rein in the Republican-led stampede to undo what Donald Trump’s immediate predecessor as president, Barack Obama, sought to implement.

The Affordable Care Act needs refinement and improvement, not repeal; the nation needs to do more, not less, to protect our environment; America must remain engaged in world affairs, working closely with our allies.

Trump’s agenda seeks to divide Americans and seeks to separate the world’s greatest nation from the rest of the planet. He has vowed to “put America first,” and pledged to “make America great again.”

Democrats have been handed a tailor-made theme on which to campaign against those who are running under the banner of the party that is led by the most unqualified, untruthful and unfit man elected to the presidency in the nation’s history.

Don’t hate me just because I have declared my bias. Those on the other side of the divide have their own bias, too.

Let’s have this debate … beginning right this minute.

national news

What a year it has been, eh?

I am going to give Donald J. Trump and his presidential election team some props.

Hell hasn’t frozen over. I just want to share a brief word about how this man pulled off the most stunning political upset I’ve ever witnessed.

He won a presidential election one year ago. No one outside of his team really thought he’d win. At least they weren’t saying so publicly. I cannot know what they were thinking in private.

I was one American who was certain that voters would make history on Nov. 8, 2016 by electing the first woman as president of the United States. My money was on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Silly me. Silly all those so-called “experts.” Voters made history, all right, by electing a guy with no public service experience. None. Zero. He surprised us all.

What’s more, he did it despite saying the most outrageous things I’ve ever heard. He won despite mocking his opponents, hurling insults left and right, spewing outright lies almost daily. He won despite exhibiting profound ignorance of government and the political process.

I once declared that Donald Trump would be “my president” in spite of the fact that I voted — along with a significant plurality of Americans — for the other major-party candidate on the ballot. Yes, he is my president. I am not happy about it.

In the year since the election I’ve tried to figure out just how he did it. How did this carnival barker/clown pull off this huge upset? I guess I’ll go with the view that he spoke the Language of the Everyman. He tapped into that latent anger at The Establishment. He managed to persuade enough voters in just the right states that the nation was going to hell when in fact it has been in economic recovery since 2009.

He pushed forward the lie that he would “make America great again.” If you think about it, he managed with that slogan to insult the greatness of this nation that’s always existed through good times and bad.

I’ll have more to say later as we look back on the year since Trump’s inauguration. For now, it’s good to reflect on what truly was a historic presidential election.

You can’t see me do it, but at this moment I am shaking my head.

media news, national news

How does Trump justify his media hatred?

The hate/hate relationship Donald John Trump has with the media has baffled me from the beginning of his presidency.

You see, the man ought to be thanking the media for the role they played in advancing his presidential candidacy. It hasn’t worked out that way. He has become the media’s Enemy No. 1. And how? Because he fired the first shot in the war.

The media’s making of a presidential candidacy became evident from the candidate’s first day on the campaign trail. He rode down that elevator at Trump Tower in June 2015 and a “love affair” was born.

Trump made outlandish statements from Day One. The media didn’t challenge him. The media seemed reluctant to call the candidate what he was: a liar.

When he announced his plan to ban Muslims from entering the country, he said he witnessed “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers; he didn’t witness any such thing. He said he lost “many friends” in the Twin Towers; he didn’t lose any friends.

Did the media challenge him in real time for the lies he told? No. They generally let them ride.

Prior to his running for the first public office he ever sought — the presidency — Trump loved the media exposure as long as it promoted his business ventures. He loved the media as well. He chummed around with media moguls.

Eventually, and it took a while, the media began to wise up to how the candidate was playing them. They started, um, doing their job.

It’s been said that the media should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That’s what they do. It’s part of their charge as professionals. Trump is among the more, uh, comfortable people in public life; he kept telling us how fabulously wealthy he is. And smart, too.

It’s gone downhill ever since. His election as president has turned the one-time media lover into a media hater. He labels the media as the “enemy of the American people.” His standard retort to anything he deems negative is to call it “fake news.” Trump commits the unconscionable act of singling out individual reporters and the news organizations they represent. He lies continually and the media keep calling him out.

It truly is an amazing turn of events. The president of the United States has declared war on the very institution he needs to inform the public of whatever message he wants to deliver.

Every single one of the president’s predecessors has experienced difficulty with the media during their time in the office Trump now occupies. They all understood something that Trump ignores: The media kept them accountable for their actions.

The media are doing now what they should have been doing from the very beginning of this guy’s campaign for the presidency.

national news, political news

It’s only been a year since the ’16 election?

We’re about to commemorate the longest political year in many of our lives.

We’ll mark the event this coming Wednesday. One year ago, American voters — in my oh-so-humble view — made a monumental mistake. They elected Donald John Trump Sr. as president of the United States of America.

I might be inclined to wait until Jan. 20 — Inauguration Day — to call attention to this one-year-later moment. Except that the “fun” started almost immediately after the votes were counted.

Hillary Rodham Clinton ended up with nearly 3 million more votes cast for her than for Trump. However, Trump won where it counted, in the Electoral College.

My wife and I remember watching it unfold with some friends in Amarillo. We went to our friends’ home expecting to cheer Clinton’s election as the nation’s first female president. Then came words none of us wanted to hear. They came from longtime Democratic operative James Carville, who said on CNN that, “I don’t like what’s happening” with the vote count.

Trump was picking off states that Barack Obama won twice: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

It was game over fairly early.

It’s been a rocky year since the election, don’t you think? Trump got inaugurated and managed to make a mess out of that event, quibbling with reporting that challenged the size of the crowd gathered in front of the Capitol Building.

The new president’s inaugural speech was dark, forbidding and grim. The one comment that sticks in our craw, ‘er, mind is when he said “The American carnage stops right here.” Uplifting, right?

It’s been one hissy fit after another ever since.

One would hope to mark the moment by calling it an “anniversary” of sorts. I won’t use that term to describe this upcoming event. Anniversaries are meant to celebrate things: weddings, moon landings, heroic events. You know. Positive occurrences.

I get that many readers of this blog will disagree with me on this. But  don’t consider Donald Trump’s election as president to be a happy event. It saddens, sickens and frightens me.

And to think it was just a year ago. It seems like an eternity.

national news

Longing for when presidents were gracious winners

You remember Sally Yates, right? She is the former deputy U.S. attorney general fired by Donald J. Trump because she wouldn’t enforce the president’s ban on Muslims seeking to enter the country.

She’s now speaking out against the president’s insistence that the Justice Department investigate Hillary Rodham Clinton. For what is not entirely clear. The president just keeps hammering at and yammering about Clinton.

Yates wrote this in a tweet, according to The Hill: “DOJ not a tool for POTUS to use to go after his enemies and protect his friends,” Yates said in a tweet Saturday. “Respect rule of law and DOJ professionals. This must stop.”

Oh, how I long for the days when presidents won elections, got about the business of governing, said a good word about their opponents and then let bygones be bygones … even after tough and bruising political campaigns.

Donald Trump isn’t wired that way. In fact, he is not wired to govern effectively, to assume the office of the presidency with grace and dignity. Oh no. He’s wired instead to keep up the battle. He wants to re-litigate an election he won. He wants to keep smearing his opponents’ faces in the fact that he won an Electoral College victory.

There once was a time when presidents didn’t obsess over past battles — particularly those they won. They instead looked ahead exclusively to the myriad challenges that lay before them.

Not Trump. He said in a radio interview: “The saddest thing is, because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved in the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing and I’m very frustrated by it.”

Uh, Mr. President? You are the president of the United States. You have the power to do whatever you want — within the law and the U.S. Constitution. If you choose to move away from the 2016 election — which you won! — then just do so.

Dammit!

national news, political news

With a ‘friend’ like this, Hillary’s in trouble

You know already that I supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. So it is with more than a bit of chagrin that I am hearing some bad news about her failed bid for the White House.

The weirdest part of it is that it is coming from a fellow Democrat who I always presumed was on her side. Silly me. That’ll teach me for presuming too much.

Donna Brazile, a long time Democratic operative who served for a time as interim chairman of the Democratic Party, has come out with some stunning news about Clinton’s campaign.

One is that Clinton’s campaign “rigged” the party nominating process in her favor. It used underhanded tactics to torpedo the campaign of Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. Brazile alleges that Clinton didn’t consider Sanders to be a real Democrat; he represents Vermont as an independent in the U.S. Senate.

This rigging allegation, of course, adds fuel to the fire that continues to burn that Clinton is “crooked,” “ruthless” and will do whatever it takes to win, no matter who it harms.

I will concede that I do think less of Clinton than I did a year ago, or even a week ago.

What’s worse, though, is what the revelations from Brazile reveal about her, not Clinton.

We also have learned that Brazile has written that she contemplated replacing the Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine ticket with one led by then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Think of the ham-handed nature of such a decision were it to come to pass. The Democratic Party had nominated a candidate nearly every political analyst in America believed was a lock for the presidency. Then she stumbles along the way. Her campaign went into a form of intellectual vapor lock. Brazile was so upset she was going to engineer an ouster of the party’s nominee?

I surely get that Clinton’s foes are going to seize on this as proof — as they see it — that she is Satan’s daughter. I won’t go there.

Yes, these are disturbing things to hear from an ostensible ally of the woman thought to be the next president of the United States.

Are they deal breakers? Do they make me rethink my support for her in 2016? Given the choice we faced nearly one year ago … not for a single second!

national news

Indictments ratchet up weirdness factor

Paul Manafort is under house arrest after being indicted for money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

The former Trump campaign chairman, though, reportedly has engaged in some seriously weird travel behavior.

Court filings have revealed that Manafort has three U.S. passports, all under different names. He reportedly traveled abroad under aliases.

It makes me wonder: Who in the world does that?

I get that Manafort is a wealthy man, as Rick Gates, a campaign deputy who also has been indicted by the grand jury impaneled by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating that so-called “Russia thing.” I also get that rich people do things with which I am unfamiliar.

For instance, I possess just one passport. It has my actual name, my actual date of birth and my actual statement that I am an American citizen. I present it when I travel abroad. Passport officials look at it, stamp it and send me on my way.

Financial holdings also questioned

CNN reports as well that Manafort revealed differing estimates of his net worth, as did Gates.

Both men have pleaded not guilty to the assorted money laundering and conspiracy charges. They now are entitled to mount vigorous defenses to uphold their not-guilty pleas.

I have to wonder, however: What in the world gives with the multiple passports and fake names?

national news

Here come the indictments

Robert Mueller’s planned announcement of indictments relating to “The Russia Thing” has taken on the look of a film premiere.

I’m on pins and needles.

A federal grand jury reportedly is set to issue indictments based on special counsel Mueller’s intense investigation into whether the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign “colluded” with Russian hackers who sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Who’s going to be indicted? Former national security adviser Michael Flynn? Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort? Might it be presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner?

Could it be all of the above?

Trump team gets ready

The Trump legal team reportedly is preparing some sort of reaction to the news that’s coming Monday from the grand jury.

Of course, the president continues to insist there’s nothing to hide. He says he didn’t collude with the Russians; yet he continues to bristle publicly that Mueller is continuing this investigation at all.

My take is as it’s been for months: If the president has nothing to hide, then he should just let Mueller and his team of legal eagles do their job. If he has done nothing wrong, then the Mueller team can say so publicly.

That’s not how this president rolls, though.

Which makes me wonder: Is this guy hiding something?

Hey, let’s all stay tuned. Pass the popcorn.

national news, political news

Hillary didn’t want to attend inaugural? No kiddin’!

Hillary Rodham Clinton has revealed to the BBC what many of us already suspected, if not knew: She didn’t want to attend the inaugural of Donald John Trump.

As The Hill reported: “I really tried to get out of going,” Clinton said in an appearance on BBC One’s “The Graham Norton Show.” “We thought ‘OK, maybe others aren’t going.’ “

Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee who lost to Trump in 2016, told BBC she sought out the family of President Bush 43; they would attend. She sought advice from President and Mrs. Carter; they were going, too. President and Mrs. Obama, of course, had to be there. President and Mrs. Bush 41 couldn’t attend because of the former president’s poor health.

In many ways I can understand Hillary’s reluctance. Trump had insulted her for months prior to Election Day. He didn’t just dispute policy differences with his opponent. Trump chose to belittle her just as he did his Republican primary opponents prior to winning the GOP nomination; some of those GOP foes chose to boycott the party’s nominating convention. I didn’t blame them, either.

According to BBC: Clinton also said she wanted Trump to “rise to the occasion of being our president” during his inaugural address, but said “that didn’t happen” because of Trump’s “dark, divisive speech.”

Yes, it was dark. It was angry. The new president didn’t strike any kind of unifying tone. He spoke only to the base of voters who carried him to victory. He didn’t speak to the rest of us, seeking to tell us he would do all he could be president of all Americans.

I’m glad Hillary accompanied her husband, the former president, to the inaugural. However, if she’d have stayed away, I surely would have accepted that decision, too.