Tag Archives: Oval Office

national news

Letter from ‘BO’ now seems oddly unwelcome to DT

Under normal circumstances, a letter from one president of the United States to his successor wouldn’t seem to be worthy of much attention.

These aren’t normal times. For starters, Donald J. Trump isn’t your “normal” president. He spoke kindly of his immediate predecessor, Barack H. Obama, when the two men met face to face for the first time in the Oval Office right after Trump’s election as president.

It went downhill from there. Rapidly. Angrily.

So, when CNN released the contents of the traditional note that presidents leave behind, it’s worth noting the outreach that President Obama extended to his successor.

The note ends with this: Michelle and I wish you and Melania the very best as you embark on this great adventure, and know that we stand ready to help in any ways which we can.

I do not doubt the former president’s good wishes for the Trumps. I’d like to throw away my doubt about how the new president felt about the former president upon visiting him in the Oval Office. But I cannot.

Here’s the full note from Obama to Trump.

If only the president hadn’t defamed the former president with that scurrilous and baseless claim about wiretapping the Trump campaign’s offices in Trump Tower. Or if only he would resist the temptation to say again and again about the “mess” he inherited from the 44th president, which I happen to believe is another lie.

Trump’s loud mouth and his boisterous criticism of All Things Obama appear aimed at pleasing only the base within his own Republican Party while ignoring the support that the former president enjoyed among millions of other Americans.

So now we know what the former president wrote to the man who took his place in the Oval Office. To me, the most poignant passage in the note deals with the transitory nature of the office.

It reads: (W)e are just temporary occupants of this office. That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions — like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties — that our forebears fought and bled for. Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it’s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.

There’s no need to elaborate on whether I believe Donald Trump — to date — has kept faith with that bit of advice.

political news

It helps to know what you don’t know

One of the gazillion things that have been said of Donald John Trump is that the president of the United States “doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”

He seems to be the Bubble Boy of American politics, insulated from the effects of the barbs and boulders tossed at him. Or so he thinks.

Now comes former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich to offer a bit of specificity, which is that Trump doesn’t realize just how “isolated” he has become.

Critics of this blog will recall that I’ve dismissed Newt in the past as a know-nothing has-been, a philanderer who in the late 1990s made a big case against former President Clinton over his, um, philandering. 

On this one, though, Newt might be on to something. He said on Fox News: “On the Hill, he has far more people willing to sit to one side and not help him right now, and I think that he needs to recognize he’s taken a good first step with bringing in Gen. (John) Kelly (as chief of staff), but he needs to think about what has not worked.”

Trump’s term as president is in trouble. He has declared open warfare on fellow Republicans. Democrats detest him already, so they need zero push to resist every single thing he proposes. He cannot fill key deputy Cabinet posts, or senior White House staff jobs. The roster of federal judgeships remains largely vacant.

The president’s legislative agenda has high-centered. It has no traction. Tax reform is likely to get stalled. He won’t get the money he wants to build that wall along our southern border. Congressional leaders are going to increase the budgetary debt ceiling despite what the president says.

Trump once boasted that “I, alone” can fix what’s wrong.

No, Mr. President. You cannot. It is impossible.

He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know … which is dangerous not just for him, but for the country.

military news

Trump throws down on Pakistan

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There’s quite a bit to parse about Donald Trump speech tonight about a change of strategy in our nation’s ongoing war in Afghanistan and its military policies regarding South Asia.

Let’s look briefly at Pakistan

The president has declared that Pakistan has to step up and become a significant U.S. ally in the fight against the Taliban, ISIS and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

I actually agree with the president’s view on Pakistan, a nation I never have trusted fully to be a valuable partner in that struggle. You’ll recall that in May 2011 our SEAL and CIA commandos killed Osama bin Laden in a compound where he lived for years inside of Pakistan. No one has yet produced evidence that the Pakistanis were totally ignorant of bin Laden’s presence inside their country.

So, yes, the Pakistanis have to demonstrate their commitment to fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan.

Then the president reached across Pakistan and tapped its arch-rival India to play a larger role in this effort. Can there be a more stinging slap in the Pakistanis’ face than that?

The strategy change as delivered tonight lacks detail. Trump’s decision to wage war until circumstances dictate a possible end creates the potential for an open-ended conflict. Are we ready for that?

He also laid down a marker at the feet of the Afghan government. Trump wants to see “real results” in an effort to end corruption. He wants to see the Afghans demonstrate a military capability that prevents the Taliban from return to power.

The president talked for quite a long time before running for office that the Afghan War was a foolish contest. Then he took his seat behind the Oval Office desk, he said tonight, and saw things differently. I’m glad he recognized how perspectives change when you obtain power.

Something is gnawing at my gut that we’ve just heard the president of the United States commit this country to continuing fighting a war that still seems to lack a strategy for winning.

U.S. forces won far more battles in Vietnam than they lost. Conventional wisdom held that we should have actually won that war. We didn’t. The Vietnamese outlasted us. We left and the enemy we “defeated” on the battlefield took control of the government we sought to protect and preserve.

Is there a similar outcome awaiting us in Afghanistan?

national news

Bannon is gone; POTUS remains

Before we all cheer ourselves hoarse over the departure of far-right provocateur Stephen Bannon from the White House, I’d like to offer a not-so-subtle reminder.

Donald John Trump Sr. is still the president of the United States.

Make no mistake: I am delighted to see Bannon shown the door. Chief of staff John Kelly stepped up and did his job with authority and a bit of panache.

However, as we’ve all been reminded so painfully for the entire length of the Trump administration, the president calls the shots; everything happens or doesn’t happen because of the Man in the Oval Office.

Gen. Kelly is able to whip the White House staff into shape. He cannot whip the Big Man into similar shape. He cannot persuade Trump to control his Twitter impulse. He cannot get the president to keep his mouth shut when he meets with reporters, which was astonishingly evident this week in that jaw-dropping press encounter at Trump Tower.

Bannon’s “alt-right” point of view is gone from the White House. Does any of this mean that the West Wing’s newfound professionalism is going to find its way to the Oval Office? Does it mean that the president will start cracking the books and start learning about the executive branch of government over which he now presides? Does it mean he’s going to actually read the U.S. Constitution and come to grips with what it says about how governing is a team sport, with Congress and the courts also playing a role?

You know the likely answer to all of that. It ain’t likely to happen. None of it. We’ll still have an out-of-control president who has managed to alienate himself from damn near every key player on Capitol Hill.

Oh, and remember? This is just Day 211 of Donald J. Trump’s term as president.

national news

Gen. Kelly’s ‘dismay’ comes from the top

I had high hopes for John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff.

The retired Marine general came aboard to repair a dysfunctional West Wing operation that was tearing itself to pieces. Within hours after reporting to work on his first day, Kelly showed renegade communications director Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci the door.

Then he restricted access to the president. He made sure everyone on the staff reports to him. He seemed to get a quick handle on the complicated mechanics of the White House machinery.

Except for one thing: He cannot manage the president himself. No sir. Donald John Trump Sr. is his own man. He takes no advice from anyone. He freelances at will. He is a train in search of a place to wreck himself.

Trump did so again Tuesday afternoon. He walked into the Trump Tower lobby and launched into an unannounced rant against the media, against the counter protesters who challenged the racists who had gathered in Charlottesville; he said “both sides” were responsible for the misery and mayhem that occurred.

And Gen. Kelly stood in the background, arms crossed, looking at his feet, wincing more than once.

Then came reports that Trump’s out-of-control impulses have the chief “dismayed.” Well, yeah, do ya think?

The chief of staff has plenty of clout to make White House staffers toe the line. He has none, though, as it regards the guy who sits in the big chair in the Oval Office.

I truly wish Gen. Kelly success. Wishing it, however, likely won’t bring it to this spit-and-polish Marine.

political news

More to say about those ‘leaks’

The White House is leaking like a sieve. It’s “bad” and “sad,” to quote the common flourish at the end of Donald J. Trump’s tweets.

But are they illegal? Have they put the nation’s security at risk? Have they compromised strategic and tactical operations … anywhere in the world?

No. No. And no!

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats have issued a stern warning: Leakers will be hunted down and prosecuted.

For what? For exposing fallibility within the administration, in the president, in his top aides?

I point to transcripts of two phone calls the president made shortly after taking office. One of them went to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto; the other went to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The Pena Nieto transcript revealed that Trump spoke out of both sides of his mouth about whether Mexico would “pay for the wall” he wants to build our countries’ shared border. Trump has been telling U.S. audiences that they will; he told Pena Nieto, according to the transcript, that the wall wasn’t all that important to him. What gives, Mr. President?

The Turnbull transcript revealed the president’s stunning ignorance about foreign policy and about a deal struck between former President Barack Obama and the Australian government regarding the disposition of 1,250 refugees. Turnbull sought to explain it to Trump in elemental terms; Trump didn’t get it. He hung up on Turnbull.

Did either incident reveal anything regarding our national security? Did they disclose operational data? Did either of them do anything more than simply embarrass — if that’s possible with this president — Donald Trump?

Let’s all settle down about these leaks. I get that the president hates them. No president in the history of the Republic likes them. No president wants key staff or senior advisers stabbing them in the back.

Just maybe the cause of the leaks ought to be the president’s focus, rather than seeking to punish the leakers.

Might it be that these aides are talking to the media out of their own concern over the quality of leadership that’s being exhibited in the Oval Office?

national news, political news

It’s you, Mr. President, not your chief of staff

The critiques are pouring in on the White House in the wake of the ouster of Reince Priebus as chief of staff.

Donald John Trump shoved Priebus out the door this week and hired Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly as the new chief.

But those critiques seem to be conveying the same message: The White House failure to function as a “fine-tuned machine” — which is how Trump once described his administration — belongs solely to the president, not the chief of staff.

It’s Trump’s tweets. It’s his capriciousness. It’s his ignorance of government and how it works. It’s the presence of unqualified family members in the innermost circle of key advisers. It’s that maniac communications director — Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci — who reports directly to the president.

Because the president doesn’t know how to assemble a competent governing team, his chief of staff has fallen on the proverbial grenade.

His new chief of staff, Kelly, comes from an entirely different mold. He is a career Marine Corps officer; a retired four-star general; a war hero; a Gold Star father who lost a son in combat. He’s a kick-ass military man.

My latest Question of the Day is simply this: Is the president going to let Gen. Kelly run the White House and control the message the way it’s supposed to be done, the way many effective chiefs of staff have done?

I don’t know what John Kelly is doing this weekend as he prepares to assume this new gig, but I would hope he’d be on the phone with some preceding chiefs of staff and asking them for pointers on how he ought to proceed in this atmosphere of chaos and confusion.

The source of that chaos? He sits on the Oval Office.

national news

No WH tapes? Well, who knew?

Donald J. Trump campaigned for president claiming he wasn’t a “politician.” However, he’s developed the art of the standard politician’s dodge.

He implies something, then takes it back and then suggests someone else might be responsible for what he referred to in the first place.

The president today tweeted a statement that said he did not tape any conversations with former FBI Director James Comey just prior to firing him. That settles it, yes?

I guess so.

Except that now he suggests that a third party might have taped conversations he and Comey allegedly had about whether the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign over that infamous “Russia thing.”

This past month, Trump tweeted something that stated Comey “had better hope” no one had recorded the meetings. The implication seemed clear: Trump might have done so himself. Today he said he didn’t.

Then he added this morsel via Twitter: “With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are ‘tapes’ or recordings of my conversations with James Comey,” he tweeted.

Good ever-lovin’ grief, man. He is the president of the United States of America. He has at his disposal every possible resource to know with absolute certainty who could have done such a thing within the confines of the White House, if not the bleeping Oval Office itself.

This clown continues to play games with the system and, most of all, with the people he purports to represent as their president.

Read The Hill’s report of the president’s disclosure here.

national news

Cell phone, Mr. President?

I get that Donald J. Trump wants to open up lines of communication between his office and those of other world leaders.

The president’s motives appear to be noble.

But hold on! He’s giving out his personal, private cellphone number to those other leaders? Is that what I’m hearing?

Whoa, Mr. President!

Cellphones aren’t secure. I keep hearing how they’re vulnerable to, um, hacking. People can listen in. Bad people can listen and do terrible things in reaction to what they hear.

And so the president of the United States wants to talk openly, and I presume candidly, with world leaders about the myriad problems facing the world.

https://www.apnews.com/11a48fde81634789b1cc361696693b68

If the president wants to maintain open communications with other leaders, I have an idea. Let ’em call you on the secure line in the Oval Office, or in the Situation Room.

Handing out personal cellphone numbers is fraught, shall we say, with some serious national security concerns. Don’t you think?

And didn’t the president — when he was running for the office — bellow incessantly about all the alleged security breaches created by Hillary Clinton’s use of her personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state?

I am shaking my head.

national news

President continues his insult tirade

One of the many promises Donald J. Trump made when he became president was that he would “act like a president.” He would talk like one, too.

He was elected to the highest office in America after burying his Republican primary foes in a mudslide of insults. Then he turned his insult machine loose on Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Low Energy Jeb Bush, Little Marco Rubio all ran against Trump in the GOP primary. Trump also told an interviewer that Sen. John McCain was a Vietnam War hero “only because he was captured; I like people who aren’t captured, OK?”

Then he turned his guns loose on Crooked Hillary Clinton. He urged on campaign rally crowds to yell “Lock her up!”

His core of supporters didn’t mind. Trump merely was “telling it like it is,” they said. He’s not a politician, they insisted. He talks like the rest of us, they added.

Has he stopped hurling insults now that he’s president?

Nope. Not a chance. Now we hear — from the “fake news” mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times — that he fired FBI Director James Comey because he’s a “nut job,” that he’s “crazy.”

Ah, yes. That’s how the president refers to the nation’s top federal cop, America’s top law enforcement officer. A nut job. He’s crazy.

Who heard the president offer this bit of presidential dignity? The Russian foreign minister and Russia’s ambassador to the United States. They were invited into the Oval Office on a suggestion from Russian President/dictator/killer Vladimir  Putin, who asked Trump to have these fellows stop by for a visit.

Oh, and then there’s this: Trump banned American journalists from the meeting. The Russian news agency, Tass, was present. Tass photographers took pictures of the meeting.

If you’ll forgive me for borrowing a term that Trump himself used in one of his endless string of tweets: This man’s behavior is so “unpresidented.”