Tag Archives: Donald Trump

political news

A joke, Mr. President? Why not apologize?

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has inherited the least desirable job in America: White House press secretary.

She is assigned to defend statements that pour out of the mouth of the president of the United States, who recently told law enforcement officials that they need not concern themselves with treating criminal suspects with respect.

It’s OK to rough up those who are arrested, Donald John Trump Sr. said.

Sanders’ answer to that? The president was making a joke, she said.

Wow! I missed that one. I didn’t see it as a joke. I was offended. So were top cops across the land. So were politicians in both parties.

This, therefore, begs the question: Why not apologize for a misconstrued joke, Mr. President?

I get that Trump isn’t inclined to apologize for anything. He hasn’t said he’s sorry for a single thing he has said since becoming a politician in June 2015. The insults? The mocking of disabled individuals? The defamation of political opponents? The furthering of “fake news” involving President Barack Obama’s place of birth? Nothing, man.

Pols apologize all the time for jokes that fall flat. Heck, I’d even settle for one of those phony “If I offended anyone … “ non-apologies we hear on occasion. Yes, even one of those would be welcome if it were to come from the lips of the Non-Apologist in Chief.

Was he joking, or not? The president’s silence on this matter of police conduct suggests — to me — that he meant what he said.

national news

Special counsel’s plate getting quite full

Robert Mueller keeps getting more information than he can digest at a single sitting.

Yep, the special counsel assigned to examine Russian government meddling into our electoral process and allegations that the Donald J. Trump campaign colluded with the Russians is getting a good bit more, um, complicated.

The Washington Post is reporting, for instance, that the president told Donald John Trump Jr. how he should describe a meeting Don Jr. had with a Russian lawyer who invited him to meet so he could receive some alleged dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The president’s lawyer denies the story outright. Other Trump defenders accuse the Post of conveying “fake news.”

But, oh, this is the stuff of serious political intrigue.

Don Jr. supposedly reported the meeting was to be about “Russian adoption policy.” That wasn’t the case, according to the Post, which reports that young Don got instructions from Dad the President on what to say.

I believe that might constitute a serious obstruction of justice matter … if it’s true. The Post, of course, stands by its story, while the White House denies all of it.

Don Jr. isn’t talking. Imagine that.

Recall that another special counsel, Kenneth Starr, started looking into a real estate deal involving President and Mrs. Clinton. Then more tidbits began flying over his transom. Eventually, Starr got wind of a relationship Bill Clinton was having with a young White House intern. Starr poked around a little more and, well, the rest is history.

Mueller has the same latitude as Starr as he pursues the Russia matter. Stories such as the one published by the Post give him even more grist to pore through as he continues his pursuit of the truth behind the Russia story.

religious news

Don’t try to predict what God intends

Don’t you just love it when evangelists try to predict what’s on the mind and in the heart of The Almighty?

This little video snippet suggests two points to me.

One is that no one — no matter how godly he claims to be — should try to predict what God is going to do, or how he’s going to act if you do something that displeases him.

The other is that it’s perilous to meld spiritual matters into political ones, particularly when they involve the current president of the United States of America.

The video here is of Jim Bakker, the once-famous televangelist who’s pitching something called the “Trump Prophecies.” He says something about how Americans should be wary of what God will do if they go against the president’s agenda, his purpose in leading in the country — whatever the heck that all means.

Trump is doing God’s work on Earth, Bakker seems to suggest.

How does this guy know these things? Earth to Bakker: God’s work defies humankind’s meager, fallible ability to make bold predictions.

That’s why he’s God and none of us mere mortals — and that includes Jimmy Bakker — are not. Got it? Good!

My second point simply is that it continues to baffle me to the max why certain evangelical leaders remain faithful to Donald John Trump Sr. Can anyone out there point me to an example of how this man ever demonstrated a commitment to the Lord’s teachings prior to his being elected president of the United States?

This guy says things about women that should flummox evangelicals. He politicizes a speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree, injecting politics into an event aimed at paying tribute to the kindness and good work of the Boy Scouts of America. He continually demonstrates a level of narcissism and self-aggrandizement that run absolutely counter to the way Jesus lived during his brief time on Earth.

But these evangelicals love this guy!

Go figure, man.

If you can comprehend this, then y’all are far better individuals than I ever thought of being.

national news

What? It’s only been 193 days?

One hundred ninety-three days ago, Donald John Trump Sr. placed his hand on a Bible and took an oath as president of the United States.

Is it me or does it seem like an eternity? Why does it seem as though we’ve endured this man’s fumbles and foibles for an interminable length of time?

I’m wondering how the nation will be able to suck it up for the next nearly four years.

The White House chaos is exhausting even for those of us out here, hundreds of miles away. How does the president of the United States manage to keep his head in the game? How in the world does his staff cope with the utter pandemonium that pervades virtually every action within the White House?

It has only been 193 days? I’m worn out already. I need to catch my breath, get my second and third winds, and trudge on watching this drama continue to play out.

legal news, national news

Oh, that POTUS, what a card

Newly minted White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sought to tamp down criticism of Donald Trump’s call for cops to rough up suspects.

The president was “making a joke,” Sanders said.

Oh, now I get it. Why didn’t I realize it in the moment when the president told cops in Long Island, N.Y., that they shouldn’t have to presume that criminal suspects are innocent until a court proves them guilty?

I know why it didn’t dawn on me — or on police chiefs across the nation. It’s because no one took it as a joke. They took it as a statement of principle from Trump. They issued statements individually and collectively that police shouldn’t rough up criminal suspects; they also condemned the president’s statements on the subject.

They are sensitive to police relations with the communities they serve, owing to repeated incidents of police-involved shootings in connection with the deaths of African-Americans.

But, hey! He was joking, said press secretary Sanders.

“I believe he was making a joke at the time,” Sanders said during today’s White House press briefing.

Actually, the president did make a reasonable call for the end to the notorious gang MS-13, in his remarks to police in Suffolk County, N.Y. Then he twisted off into this rough-’em-up rhetoric.

“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in. Rough, I said. Please don’t be too nice,” Trump said. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know? The way you put their hand over. Like, don’t hit their head, and they’ve just killed somebody? Don’t hit their head? I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’”

Nice try, Sarah Sanders. You might “believe” the president was joking. Many of the rest of us — including the men and women who lead local police agencies — don’t see it that way.

business news, national news

‘Economy is doing so well’

Donald John Trump is rightfully happy with the state of the national economy.

The stock market is setting records. Joblessness is low. More jobs are being added to non-farm payrolls. Consumer and business confidence is high.

That’s all great, Mr. President.

The president talked about all of that today as White House chief of staff John Kelly reported for work on his first day in the West Wing.

Here’s the deal, though. The trend the president cited is a continuation of the “mess” he supposedly inherited when he took over this past January from Barack H. Obama.

Didn’t the one-time Republican candidate for president trash the daylights out of President Obama’s stewardship of the nation’s economy? Didn’t he cite sluggish GDP growth as part of that so-called “mess”?

I’ll give the president credit, though, for a recent Commerce Department report that ticked up GDP growth a bit past its original estimate. For that, the president can take some measure of credit.

I just find it curiously ironic that one president’s economic “mess” becomes another president’s economic “miracle.”

national news

A ‘fine-tuned machine’ at work? Hardly

Let’s take stock for a brief moment of an organization that Donald J. Trump once called a “fine-tuned machine.”

* National security adviser Michael Flynn is forced out after 24 days.

* White House communications director Mike Dubke resigned after five months on the job.

* Sean Spicer quit after six months as press secretary when the president hired Dubke’s successor over Spicer’s expressed objections.

* Reince Priebus is forced out as White House chief of staff after seven months, the shortest tenure in history.

* Anthony Scaramucci gets the boot as the new communications director after just 10 days, setting another record for public service brevity.

Five top White House staff members are out the door. And yet … the president once called his administration a “fine-tuned machine” that has been the most productive administration in U.S. political history.

All that productivity has resulted in precisely zero major legislative accomplishments. Republicans now control the White House in addition to Capitol Hill. They wanted to toss out the Affordable Care Act, but failed, with little expectation now that they’ll be able to accomplish their No. 1 mission in life.

You may choose to believe or disbelieve my next statement, but I’ll make it anyway.

I do not wish failure on this administration. I am trying to take the higher road than the one taken by some right-wing radio talk show blowhards who wanted President Barack Obama to fail during his two terms in office.

However, the president needs to stop telling us lies about fine-tuned machines and all that alleged productivity. All roads leading to the White House are strewn with wreckage.

The task now falls on the new White House chief of staff, John Kelly, to clean it up.

national news, political news

Great start, Gen. Kelly!

Donald John Trump Sr. welcomed new White House chief of staff John Kelly to his post this morning.

The president predicted that Kelly would do a “spectacular job” in the West Wing. I’m going to presume a bit here, but it looks as though the new chief of staff is off to a rip-roarin’ start.

Within hours of being sworn in, Kelly got the president to give White House communications director Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci the heave-ho — 10 days after Trump hired him!

There’s no nice way to say this, but Mooch conducted himself like a maniac in his White House job. He has no comparable experience that would have commended him for the job and, oh brother, it showed.

Kelly brings an entirely different skill set to his chief of staff job, which he assumed after Reince Priebus got the axe this past week. Kelly is a retired Marine Corps general; he has 45 years of service in the military; he is a combat veteran — and a Gold Star father, having suffered the terrible tragedy of losing a son in combat in Afghanistan.

The president’s prediction of a “spectacular” performance by his new chief of staff was delivered quickly by the new guy.

Gen. Kelly has a long, steep mountain to climb before completing the task of converting the White House from an Animal House into a “fine-tuned” center of government operations.

His first full day at his new post suggests he is up to the task.

Then again, it’s only been a day. Gen. Kelly still has yet another wildfire to control. That would be the president of the United States.

national news

Remember the term ‘co-equal branch’

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has laid down a marker to the U.S. Senate.

Lawmakers shouldn’t vote on anything else, he said, until they vote once again on a Republican-authored bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

There you have it. One branch of government is seeking to dictate to another branch how it does its job.

Hold on here, Mr. Budget Director.

Mulvaney ought to know better. He served in Congress before Donald John Trump tapped him as budget director. He used to fight on behalf of congressional prerogative, which is spelled out quite explicitly in that document called the United States Constitution.

The Constitution, furthermore, does not give the executive branch a single bit of authority over how the legislative branch conducts its business.

The term of art for more than two centuries has been that all three government branches are “co-equal.” That means they all have equal amounts of power. One branch cannot bully another branch.

“In the White House’s view, they can’t move on in the Senate,” Mulvaney said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You can’t promise folks you’re going to do something for seven years, and then not do it.”

Got it, Mick. Do not, though, try to push senators around by laying out their legislative priorities for them. That’s their job. It’s in the Constitution. Really … it is!

International news

Is the Trump-Putin bromance over … finally?

Donald John Trump Sr. and Vladimir Putin once were thought to be made for each other.

One of them is a tough guy; the other seems enamored of tough guys. Putin is the former; Trump would be the latter.

Now, though, their relationship has taken a turn for the worst. Congress enacted a tough new sanctions protocol against Russia — as well as against North Korea — that prohibits the president from scrapping them without congressional approval.

Trump says he’ll sign the sanctions bill.

Putin responded this weekend by ordering the removal of 755 American diplomats from Russia, dramatically reducing the U.S. presence in that country. The Russian president seems to think his response is equivalent to the U.S. expelling of 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the Russians’ meddling in our 2016 presidential election.

It’s not at all proportional.

The question remains: Will the U.S. president stand firm or will he roll over?

Trump has been maddeningly reluctant to call the Russians out for their interference in our election. He keeps equivocating by suggesting that “it could be anyone” other than the Russians. He dismisses U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment that the Russians acted alone.

Will see how this plays out. My hope is that Trump awakens from his infatuation with Putin and concludes that the Russians aren’t our friends — and that the two leaders have wildly differing views on their personal relationship.