Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump, legal news, national news

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

Donald Trump, Joe Biden, national news

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

medical news, national news

Selective indignation …

I want to introduce a new term to this blog, which I will call “selective indignation.” It comes from the right-wingers who suggest that had Donald Trump said some of the wild things that come from Joe Biden’s mouth, the “left” would be going bonkers.

Really? Well, maybe so. Except that Donald Trump would say things and would demonstrate a cruel streak the likes of which I have never seen in a president of the United States.

And have you taken the time to listen carefully to the way Donald Trump seeks to articulate a point?  I would be willing argue, furthermore, that the Donald Trump of 1992 is a much more formidable debater than the Trump of 2022.

Rather than the left going nuts, we have the right frothing at its mouth. The latest Biden gaffe involves his calling out a congresswoman who has been deceased since August. “Where is she?” Biden asked at a public event the other day. She’s dead, Mr. POTUS.

And so … the right wingers out there are pointing fingers are suggesting that they have been right all along, that President Biden lacks the mental snap to serve in the world’s most powerful office.

OK. I won’t go there. I am not going to climb onto that political haywagon. The man made a mistake. I accept that it’s a beaut. It is not an indicator of anything more serious. If someone can produce any actual “evidence” of decline, then let ’em show us what they have.

Until then we have two sides of this great divide arguing among themselves over whether one side is reacting unfairly and tossing the “what about” argument that tries to defend the conduct of a politician on the other side.

Take it from someone who has lived with a loved one suffering from actual decline in mental acuity, what we are seeing in the president doesn’t qualify.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, legal news, national news, national security, political news

Will Trumpism outlive its founder?

It has been said by more than one commentator that the movement Donald J. Trump spawned will live long past the time he no longer is a political factor.

Pardon the skepticism, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.

I’ll start with this notion: I have doubt that Donald Trump is (a) going to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and (b) that the GOP has gone totally braindead to nominate him if he does enter the fray.

The Republican Party has shown itself in the past, oh, six years to be a party full of gullible numbskulls who are willing to swallow the swill delivered by Trump. They ignore the threat he continues to pose to our democratic process; they give him a pass on the idiocy that flies out of his mouth; they proclaim a desire to “defund the FBI” after the feds find top-secret documents squirreled away in his Florida home.

So, what is going to happen to Trump’s movement — his cult — once he’s no longer a political player. The way I see it, and I’ll admit it is from the cheap seats, whatever “movement” that Trump has stoked will disappear. Why keep telling The Big Lie about a “stolen election” if the Main Man is no longer calling the shots?

I am going to hold tightly onto my own hope that the law’s lengthy arm is going to corral The Donald sometime soon. The Justice Department is examining whether Trump broke the law in taking those classified documents from the White House; the House select 1/6 committee is considering whether to ask for indictment related to the insurrection that Trump clearly incited; the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney is looking into whether Trump broke state election laws by demanding that officials “find” enough votes to overturn that state’s 2020 presidential election result.

Oh, and the New York attorney general already has filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Trump Organization for allegedly falsifying its worth to obtain favorable loans.

We have, as they said in a movie, “a target-rich environment.”

The cult leader, it appears to me, is going down in flames. May the fire consume what is left of the movement that bears his name.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, local news, national news, State news

Impeach Biden? For what?

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Nancy Mace has revenge on her mind. So, too, do a number of other congressional Republicans who, according to Mace, will be ready to impeach President Biden if the GOP gains control of the House of Representatives after the midterm election.

Mace is nuttier than a Snickers bar.

She hails from South Carolina, and she says Republicans in the House will sharpen their long knives and get ’em ready to skewer the president. They will be full of vengeance because Donald Trump managed to get impeached twice by the Democratic-controlled House.

Rep. Nancy Mace, who voted against impeaching Trump, says there’s ‘a lot of pressure’ on Republicans to impeach Biden: ‘I think that is something that some folks are considering’ (msn.com)

Let’s see. Trump got impeached the first time because he placed a “perfect phone call” that sought a political favor from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom Trump wanted to dig up dirt on then-former VP Joe Biden. Most members of the House said that constituted a violation of his oath of office. The House impeached him.

Then came 1/6 and the insurrection that Trump incited. A few Republicans actually joined that House impeachment and most senators voted to convict Trump of inciting the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The only problem is that they needed 67 votes to convict; the Senate ended up with 57 votes.

Now the Republicans, if they gain control of the House, want to re-enter the impeachment battle, which they said the first two times involving Trump was all theater, that Democrats were “weaponizing” the impeachment process.

Well, what in the hell are we to believe if Republicans follow through on their stated threats to impeach President Biden?

How in the name of political vengeance can the GOP justify it?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, media news, national news, political news

What? Cheney will dump GOP?

“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he’s not the nominee … And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”

Let’s ponder for a moment who made that statement.

It comes from Liz Cheney, the senior Republican on the House select 1/6 committee. She has been a Republican her entire adult life. Her dad is former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, a Republican’s Republican if ever there was one.

She has declared at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin that if Donald J. Trump is the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, she will cease belonging to the party to which she has devoted her entire public life.

In one way that stuns me, given what I know about Cheney’s GOP credentials. In another way, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Wyoming voters cast her aside in August’s GOP primary. She sought another term as Wyoming’s lone member of the U.S. House. GOP primary voters said, in effect, forget about it, Liz; we don’t want you in the party. We censured you because you aren’t loyal to Trump.

According to the Texas Tribune: Cheney maintained that she is an ardent conservative on policy issues, voting in near lockstep with Trump’s legislative agenda when he was in office. But she warned a House Republican majority would give outsized power to members who have been staunch allies of the former president and his efforts to keep the White House, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan.

And she is all of that. Cheney also believes in the rule of law, in the oath she and Trump both took to “defend and protect” the Constitution.

Frankly — despite the fact that she represents an ideology that I dislike and my belief that Trump won’t be nominated in 2024 — I happen to be proud of Rep. Liz Cheney for standing firm on behalf of the truth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, national security, political news

Constitution works!

Gerald Ford spoke a fundamental truth only minutes after taking office as president of the United States in August 1974.

“Our Constitution works,” President Ford reminded us, as if we needed reminding about the crisis that preceded his becoming president. His predecessor, Richard Nixon, resigned just as he was about to be impeached and tried (and likely convicted) for high crimes against the Constitution.

I want to remind everyone who worries about whether the Constitution will hold up under the pressure being applied to it these days by a former POTUS who all but vows violence if he is indicted for criminal activity.

I am going to remain somewhat calm about the strength of the Constitution. It did survive the Watergate scandal. President Nixon had to quit. President Ford took office as the Constitution had been battered and bruised by the calamity of Nixon’s abuse of power.

It survived then. I am going to continue to believe in the strength of the Constitution now as the nation awaits the outcome of several investigations into a former president’s effort to upend the “peaceful transfer of power” from one administration to the next one.

I will concede that the transfer of power was not peaceful. It was bloodied by the 1/6 insurrection. However, the transition did occur.

Our Constitution works, indeed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, legal news, national news, national security

GOP senators break with Trump … woo hoo!

It’s not every day one gets to salute U.S. Senate Republicans for doing the right thing as it regards the former president of the United States, the former Liar in Chief.

Donald Trump declared on Fox News the other day that he could “declassify” documents taken from the White House and stored at his Florida home simply by “thinking” about it.

No can do … Mr. ex-POTUS. Declassification is a complicated process, Sens. John Thune, Mike Rounds and Thom Tillis told CNN.

They said:

SEN. THUNE: There’s a process for declassifying documents. And I think it ought to be adhered to and followed.

SEN. TILLIS: There’s a formal process that needs to be gone through and documented … As I understand, the executive branch requirements there is a process one must go through.

SEN. ROUNDS: I think anyone who takes the time to appropriately protect that information, and who has taken the time to see what’s in the information would have serious concerns about how items could be accessed, if they’re not stored properly.

GOP Sens. Tillis, Thune, Rounds Break With Trump: “There’s A Formal Process” For Declassifying Documents | Video | RealClearPolitics

Do you get what I mean here? Donald Trump, once again, is making things up in what passes for that brain in his thick skull.

It’s getting might cramped in that space surrounding The Donald as the walls keep closing in.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, legal news, national news, political news

I told you so … ?

As a general rule I am not one to gloat or to say “I told you so” when it regards political predictions, given that my record on that score is so abysmal.

However, I believe I might have earned the right to say “I told you so” as it pertains to whether Donald J. Trump is going to run for president of the United States in 2024.

I have expressed profound doubt that Trump would be able to mount any sort of credible campaign for POTUS. The federal judiciary, I am delighted to affirm, seems to be giving my assertions a good bit of weight.

A three-judge panel — with two judges having been nominated by Donald Trump — has essentially tossed into the crapper a ruling by another Trump judicial appointee any thought that the ex-POTUS could derail the FBI seizure of classified documents from Trump’s glitzy mansion in Florida.

Trump now is facing the prospect of having to withstand the full weight of the Justice Department probe into whether he violated the law by taking documents from the White House and “hiding” them in desk drawers in his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Furthermore, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel says the documents belong “to the people of the United States.” They aren’t Trump’s. They don’t even belong to the White House. They belong to you and me, man!

And then there’s the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James that has the potential of wiping out Donald Trump and forcing three of his adult children to file bankruptcy. AG James alleges that Trump engaged in criminal falsification of his assets in order to obtain favorable business loans.

It is the by far largest lawsuit Donald Trump has ever faced … and, brother, he’s faced a bunch of ’em in his adult professional life!

All of this leads me to conclude — with a healthy dose of caution — that I see no way on Earth that Donald Trump can possibly seek the presidency ever again.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news, crime news, Donald Trump, economic news, national news

What about the lenders?

The news networks tonight are all over the story from New York in which the New York attorney general, Letitia James, has filed a comprehensive lawsuit against Donald J. Trump and three of his adult children.

Her allegation? That the Trumps falsified their business’s net worth in obtaining loans. They allegedly fudged the value of their assets, allowing them to get loans at a favorable rate.

Something has raced past me. How did the Trumps fool lenders into thinking their assets were greater than they were?

Financial institutions are regulated by the feds. If a borrower simply says he or she is worth X amount of money, do the lenders take them at their word? Of course not! They can check tax rolls to know the truth, right?

I am waiting for an explanation into how the Trumps (allegedly) fooled the banks.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com