Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news, political news

Typical weekend for Trump: Fore!

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I am not going to criticize a president simply for playing a round of golf.

I’ve noted many times that the president of the United States is never not the president. He’s on call 24/7 and is just one instant message away from being alerted to a national/international crisis.

OK, that said … Donald J. Trump keeps demonstrating that he is not a man of his word as it relates to his constant golf outings.

The president said while campaigning for the office that he never would take time away from the White House to play golf. He criticized President Barack H. Obama for playing too much golf while he was on duty.

I stood up for Barack Obama then. I’ll stand up for Donald Trump now if he wants to play golf.

However …

It’s that constant harping while campaigning for the office that makes criticism of the president an irresistible temptation.

If only he hadn’t lied about his intention. Had he told us the truth — that he planned to play golf at one of his posh resorts while serving as president and still got elected! — then I wouldn’t be saying anything at this moment.

He didn’t. He flapped his yap while making a false promise to stay on the job in the White House. That makes his golf outings targets for criticism.

International news

North Korea launches ICBM: What now?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has done it. His military apparatus has launched an intercontinental ballistic missile — successfully at that!

The communists in Pyongyang now apparently have the means to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. Yes? U.S. military and intelligence officials are analyzing the launch.

What is the U.S. option? None of them is good.

A pre-emptive military strike is seemingly out of the question. It would provoke Kim Jong Un to launch an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. And as MSBNC military analyst Jack Jacobs — a Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient — said this morning while referencing the capital of South Korea, “Seoul is just footsteps away from the demilitarized zone.”

Hit them economically

Jacobs believes strong economic sanctions are the most effective immediate answer to preventing North Korea from doing something amazingly stupid, which would be to provoke a war with the United States.

North Korea is a poor nation that has spent almost all its national fiscal treasure on its military machine. The tinhorn dictator doesn’t care one bit, of course, about the citizens of his country.

It would be easy to say that here is where Donald J. Trump would earn his presidential salary, except that Trump supposedly isn’t getting paid to be president.

I’ll just stick with the notion that the president needs to weigh his options … very carefully.

media news, national news

Keep yammering about ‘fake news,’ Mr. President

I used to have mixed feelings about Donald Trump’s use of what is becoming an-almost hackneyed term.

“Fake news.”

The president tosses it out there with utterly no self-awareness, that he is the King of Fake News.

Barack Obama was a foreigner; thousands of Muslims cheered the Twin Towers’ collapse; Obama wiretapped the Trump campaign office; millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton.

There’s more. It’s all fake news.

Yet the president persists in using that term to hang around media organizations that report actual news that he deems to be too negative.

Negativity equals “fake news.” You got that?

Thus, the president has established a mantra that plays well among the media-hating base of American voters who more than likely — as then-candidate Trump once famously said — would still vote for him even if he were to “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.”

Do I want him to stop using the “fake news” dodge?

Not really. It just demonstrates that this president doesn’t know a single thing about the difference between what’s “fake” and what’s real.

media news, national news

POTUS redefines response strategy

Donald Trump’s communications team is defending The Boss by repeating a troubling dodge.

It is that the president is a human being and that he shouldn’t have to endure constant attacks without responding to his critics as he has done.

Deputy White House press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders was called out the other day by White House reporter who skewered her for the White House’s constant yammering about “fake news.” He said the media are simply “doing their job.” Sanders objected to the gist of what he said and implied that the media, in effect, are conspiring to concoct reports designed to put the president in a negative light.

Sanders is as wrong as wrong gets.

As for Trump’s human instincts, I feel compelled to remind the young press flack that the president’s recent predecessors all avoided the kind of petulance exhibited by the current leader of the free world.

Barack Obama also was hammered repeatedly during his two terms in office. Did he say anything even remotely similar about his critics that we are hearing from Donald Trump? Umm. Nope.

George W. Bush his share of fire from opponents as well. Did the president respond in kind? Did he go on social media to portray the media as “the enemy of the people”? No once again. Instead, President Bush understood what all presidents have known, which is that the media perform a valuable service in keeping public officials accountable for their deeds and statements.

Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford all knew as president that criticism goes with the territory. Even Richard Nixon, who came closest to the Trump model of media response, knew better than to say out loud that the media were the enemy.

I no longer have any serious hope that Donald Trump will grasp what his most recent predecessors all knew about the media and their relationship with the president.

I do, though, expect better from his spokespeople, who should cease insulting Americans with the idiocy that the president is reacting like any normal, run-of-the-mill human being.

The men who preceded him were human beings, too.

national news, political news

Donald John Trump: Grifter?

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The term “grifter” isn’t one that I toss around as a matter of routine.

It’s a fairly new addition to the English lexicon. I found a definition that read: “Someone who swindles others.”

Grifter equals swindler. Got that? Good.

Well, I heard a contemporary political pundit the other day use the term to describe Donald John Trump, the nation’s 45th president of the United States. My first reaction was “ouch, man!”

The guy on TV didn’t articulate in precisely what context Trump is a “grifter.” I’ll make a bit of a leap right here. I am going to presume he means that the president has swindled Americans into believing the things he said he would do right away if he were elected to the very first office he ever sought.

He’d toss out the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something else; he’d negotiate a deal to secure peace in the Middle East; he would pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Act; he would act more “presidential” and stop using Twitter as much as he did while running for the presidency; he would stay on the job at the White House and forgo golfing outings at any of his many luxurious resorts.

By my count that would be zero for five — and just on those particular pledges he made! Were there others? Sure. Let’s just stick with those for a moment. They’re pretty major things.

I haven’t (yet) mentioned the Trump University matter in which he settled with some plaintiffs who said they were, um, swindled out of money they paid for Trump’s defunct school. How about the money he said he would donate to veterans’ causes, but still hasn’t done so?

I’m not yet certain that the term “grifter” is going to become a regular part of my vocabulary. I get what it means and what it implies about the president of the United States.

It does seem to fit this individual’s modus operandi — as a businessman, TV celebrity and now as our head of state and commander in chief.

national news

Do as he says, not does in New Jersey

The dictionary definition of “chutzpah” is as unambiguous as it gets. “Utter nerve; gall,” says my trusty and tattered American Heritage volume.

That would describe New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to a “t.”

The Republican governor shut down the state government on Friday and then took his family to a state park on the Jersey Shore to soak up a few rays.

Did I mention that the state park system was closed to the public? Oh, I guess I just did.

Christie doesn’t get it.

This guy has ripped a page out of Donald J. Trump’s playbook, the one that instructs government executives on how to act and sound boorish while inflicting some hurt on the folks who pay the bills that run the government.

The beach was, of course, deserted. No member of the public could enjoy the park because of budget issues that created the government shutdown.

Christie’s response was typical of the blustering blowhard. ‘‘The governor has a residence at Island Beach (State Park),’’ he said. ‘‘Others don’t. That’s the way it goes. Run for governor and you can have the residence.’’

There you have it. Rank has its privileges, or so the governor would seem to suggest.

Except for this: The governor works for the residents of his state, not the other way around.

national news, political news, State news

Texas playing ball with vote fraud panel … sort of

I was hoping the Texas secretary of state would follow the lead of his fellow Republican colleague in Mississippi and tell the feds to go “jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

He didn’t. Instead, the state is going to hand over some voter records to that idiotic voter fraud commission named by Donald J. Trump to root out the hordes of illegal votes — he says — that were cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Good luck with that.

The panel led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is called the Election Integrity Commission. The president has asserted — with zero evidence at hand — that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, giving her the popular vote margin over Trump.

So he cobbled together this group to find a problem in search of a solution.

The Texas secretary of state is the state’s top elections officer. According to the Texas Tribune: “Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said he plans to respond to the request, but it’s not entirely clear how much data he’ll be handing over. Pablos said his agency would treat Kobach’s letter like any other public information request, and would only hand over information that’s considered public under Texas law.

“’The Secretary of State’s office will provide the Election Integrity Commission with public information and will protect the private information of Texas citizens while working to maintain the security and integrity of our state’s elections system,’ Pablos said in a statement. ‘As always, my office will continue to exercise the utmost care whenever sensitive voter information is required to be released by state or federal law.’”

Social Security numbers are private and as I understand it, that’s about the extentof the information Pablos’s office will withhold from this commission.

Check out the Texas Tribune explanation here.

The voter fraud panel’s request has been met with considerable resistance around the country. Officials in states that voted for Trump have said “no” to requests, as have those in states that voted for Clinton.

Honestly, this semi-acquiescence from Rolando Pablos makes me a bit nervous … and I’m a U.S. citizen.

I also wonder about something. Why is the president so damn intent on looking for widespread voter fraud that few local officials believe exist while he continues to ignore the assertion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in our electoral process?

entertainment news, media news

Trump has been called out by, um, the best

I almost don’t know how to react to this item.

Joy Reid is a TV talk show host. Her MSBNC show is called “AM Joy.” This morning she welcomed a guest to discuss Donald J. Trump’s tweet storm, namely the hideous nature of his attacks on the media.

Reid’s guest was none other than Jerry Springer, the king of daytime trash TV. Springer — of all the people on Earth — said that the president’s tweets are beneath the dignity “of any decent man.”

Roll that one around for a moment. Springer, of course, is correct. Part of me wants to applaud Springer for speaking out. Another part of me cannot get past the supreme irony of such a message coming from this guy.

I need to mention, though, that before Springer made his fortune playing host to TV guests accusing each other of engaging in behavior that boggles any reasonable mind, he once was mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio.

So, Mr. President? Take a bow. You’ve been called out by the best.

Check it out here.

media news, national news, political news

Trump changes presidency … not for the better!

Here’s another broken campaign promise from Donald John Trump.

He said he would change his approach if he were elected president of the United States, that he would become “more presidential.”

It hasn’t happened. The 71-year-old man who now is president isn’t going to change. He has demonstrated with graphic clarity his unwillingness to lend dignity to his comportment.

Indeed, this individual is changing the office he occupies.

Think of this for a moment. He goes to war with his foes, critics — and, yes, the media. He does so via Twitter. He has elevated a certain social medium to the level of venue for his policy pronouncements. The Trump White House acknowledges that his tweets become the official word of the president of the United States, our head of state, our commander in chief, the most powerful man on the planet.

Do you get it? He is lowering the office to his level! Rather than elevating his own standing to that of the exalted office to which he was elected, Trump is reducing the office a sort of playground, one populated by an overaged juvenile delinquent.

The president has disgraced his office. I would rue the day that he disgraces the great nation he is supposed to lead. However, the rest of us are better than the man who purports to be our leader.

media news

Violence against reporters? Hmm … you be the judge

The hits just keep on comin’.

The president of the United States — the man with the itchy Twitter finger — has done it again. He has tweeted a video depicting him punching out someone from CNN.

Is Donald John Trump promoting violence against the media?

Take a look right here.

Trump has failed to keep a number of campaign promises. He said he would act more “presidential” were he elected to the office. He promised to unify a nation divided badly by a rancorous political campaign. He vowed to “make America great again.”

The first two pledges have been abject failures; the third one, the “make America great” pledge was empty, as the nation already is great.

He has vented repeatedly on Twitter. He is using the social medium to — in effect — articulate presidential policy. It’s coming to us in the form we are witnessing now with the then-entertainer tackling an individual who he has portrayed as a member of a cable television news network.

What will happen if someone actually acts on what he or she has just seen on Twitter? Is it right to hold the president responsible for such action?

You be the judge.

This individual is a disgrace.