Tag Archives: Donald Trump

International news, national news

The ‘bombs’ keep exploding inside the White House

James Comey is a “nut job,” he is “crazy” and firing him relieved Donald J. Trump from the “pressure” of an investigation involving the president’s relationship with the Russian government.

That, dear reader, is a summary of what the New York Times is reporting about the president of the United States. It gets even more, um, interesting. The White House is not disputing what the Times has reported.

What does this mean as the president takes wing en route to Saudi Arabia on his first overseas trip as our head of state?

I think it means that the president is digging himself into a deeper hole as Robert Mueller, the newly appointed special counsel, begins his work to uncover the truth about the burgeoning problems that are looking more and more like a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Trump fired the former FBI director, who was in the midst of a probe into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russian government hackers seeking to influence the 2016 election. Comey wrote a memo that reportedly states that Trump asked him to drop the FBI investigation; Trump denies making that request.

Trump has fired a former acting attorney general, Sally Yates, who warned the White House about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s exposure to potential blackmail from the Russians; the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from anything to do with the Russia probe; then the AG recommends to Trump — in a memo — to fire Comey, which may have violated the terms of his recusal.

Now, what about the vice president, Mike Pence? He said Comey’s dismissal had nothing to do with the Russia probe. The president then contradicts the vice president. Who’s the bigger liar?

I believe this story is getting hotter by the hour.

Special counsel Mueller’s plate is overflowing. The piling on is coming — if you can believe it — from the principal subject of his growing investigation: the president of the United States.

International news, religious news

Get ready for Trump speech on (gulp!) — Islam!

Donald J. Trump is getting ready to climb headfirst into the belly of the beast.

He is planning a speech on Islam. The venue? Saudi Arabia, where two of Islam’s holiest cites are located.

Politico offers a list of do’s and don’ts for the president to follow.

Here it is: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/18/donald-trump-islam-speech-215150

As we know, the president isn’t known for his nuanced approach to foreign policy. He doesn’t seem to have a foreign policy. He doesn’t think strategically. He doesn’t look at the big picture. He speaks in the moment and seems to react to the last person who has his undivided attention.

I feel compelled, though, to remind everyone that he will be speaking to an audience full of people with lengthy memories. I’m quite certain they’re going to remember what candidates Donald Trump said about Muslims way back when, how he intended to impose a blanket ban on “all Muslims” entering the United States “until we figure out what the hell we’re doing.”

He’s backed off of that. He’s tried to impose executive orders banning Muslims from certain countries, only to have the federal judiciary strike them down. Why? They discriminate against people of certain religions, which the U.S. Constitution forbids.

As Politico reports: According to the president’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, “The speech is intended to unite the broader Muslim world against common enemies of all civilization and to demonstrate America’s commitment to our Muslim partners.”

Be very careful, Mr. President.

International news

Donald Trump, remember Nelson Mandela?

This photo has gone viral. It showed up on my Twitter and Facebook feeds today.

I thought I’d share it here, with a couple of quick comments.

One is that the quote from Donald J. Trump makes no equivocation about how he believes he has been treated. The phrase “No politician in history” excludes no one. It’s the height of hyperbole.

There’s that.

Two, the picture is of the late Nelson Mandela. He is looking out from his prison cell on Robben Island, in South Africa. He was held prisoner there for 27 years before being released in 1990.

His “crime”? Mandela protested his country’s apartheid policies, the law that kept black and white people separate and denied black South Africans the basic rights of citizenship. Things like, oh, voting, home ownership, the freedom to speak their minds in public. Small stuff like that.

The government scrapped its apartheid policies shortly after his release from prison and Mandela later would be elected president of South Africa.

This great man was treated far worse and “unfairly” than Donald J. Trump has been treated.

I just had to get that off my chest.

legal news

Does an ‘innocent man’ welcome or resist scrutiny?

The thought keeps popping into my noggin: If Donald John Trump is innocent of what is being alleged against him, why is he resisting so fiercely the effort to find out the truth about those allegations?

The president is now under investigation by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, over questions surrounding whether his campaign had any improper contact with Russian government officials. Mueller also is looking at whether Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to pull the plug on an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s relationship with foreign governments.

His reaction? He went quiet for about two days. Then he returned to Twitter to accuse his enemies of conducting a “witch hunt”; he opposed the appointment of a special counsel by the Justice Department; he told Coast Guard Academy graduates that he is the most persecuted politician in history.

He keeps insisting the Russian government didn’t seek to influence the 2016 election, despite what multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have said to the contrary. He also insists that “there was no collusion” between his campaign and Russian hackers.

POTUS keeps blabbing about Russia

I’m just wondering whether someone who’s clean would feel the need to fight back so strongly. Why wouldn’t the president welcome the probe, endorse Mueller’s credentials as a pro, then let the man reach a conclusion that verifies what the president has been saying?

Trump’s overheated reaction just doesn’t sound to me like something that an innocent man would do. Maybe it’s just me. I don’t think I’m alone in wondering about the conduct of a politician who keeps insisting he did nothing wrong.

legal news

Liar’s contest is developing

Donald John Trump has denied asking James Comey to pull the plug on an FBI investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

That’s one side of it.

The other side comes from the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have reported that the president did ask the former FBI director to do precisely that very thing.

We haven’t heard from Comey — yet!

Who are you going to believe? Two major newspapers’ reporters who stake their reputations on getting the story right? Or do you believe Donald Trump, a man known to prevaricate, fabricate and dish out lies whenever it suits his purpose?

Let me think. OK. I’ve thought about it.

I’m going to go with the reporters as well as those who know Comey well enough to confirm that he likely did keep a meticulous written record of his meetings with the president of the United States.

We have a liar’s contest developing. Who, then, will “win” this match? If the winner happens to be Comey — and it turns out that Trump did do what’s been reported — I would say it’s lights out for the Trump administration.

national news, political news

Witch hunt, Mr. President? C’mon!

Donald John Trump awoke from his all-too-brief Twitter nap to bang out a few words of “wisdom” this morning about the latest bit of big news.

The president tweeted: “With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special councel (sic) appointed!”

There was more: “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

Yet another tweet needs to be challenged

Mr. President, I believe I will take issue with you.

Robert Mueller’s appointment this week as special counsel aims to answer some serious questions about the president’s connections with Russian government officials. It also seeks to get to the bottom of whether Trump sought to obstruct justice by “asking” then-FBI Director James Comey to back off his investigation of Michael Flynn, the president’s disgraced former national security adviser and his own ties to foreign governments.

There might be more to uncover.

Witch hunt? The “greatest … in American history!”?

I don’t think so.

Let me cite a couple of recent examples of actual witch hunts that eclipse the examination of the current president.

President Bill Clinton was impeached because he was untruthful about a relationship he had with a White House intern. Did that relationship have any material impact on his duties as head of state and commander in chief? No. But the House of Representatives hounded him incessantly before finally approving articles of impeachment. Clinton went to trial in the Senate and was acquitted. That, Mr. Trump, was a witch hunt.

One more example deserves a look.

President Barack Obama’s legitimacy as commander in chief was questioned by his enemies over a bogus allegation that he was born in Africa and that he wasn’t constitutionally qualified to serve as president. Who led that inquisition? Oh! That would be reality TV celebrity/real estate mogul Donald John Trump. Obama said all along he was born in Hawaii, one of the 50 U.S. states. He produced a birth certificate after badgering by Trump and other arch-enemies of the president. That wasn’t good enough to satisfy them. Finally, while campaigning for the presidency in 2016, Trump said in a single sentence that Obama was “born in the United States.” That was really big of him, don’t you think?

How about knocking off the crap alleging the “greatest witch hunt” in history, Mr. President?

The president clearly is no student of history and doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about — on this or anything else!

legal news

Turn the special counsel loose

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If history is any guide, a special counsel investigation aimed at rooting out issues relating to the president of the United States and his alleged ties to Russia well could develop a life of its own.

Robert Mueller has been given the task of finding out whether Donald John Trump’s presidential campaign was complicit in Russian government efforts to swing the 2016 presidential election. He’s also going to examine possible links between a former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to the Russians. Moreover, he has latitude to look into whether the president obstructed justice by “asking” former FBI Director James Comey to shut down a probe of Flynn’s ties to Russia.

Could there be even more to learn, beyond the official tasks given to Mueller — himself a former FBI director?

Mueller’s the man

We have some historical precedent to ponder.

Kenneth Starr once held the title of “independent prosecutor.” His duty in the 1990s was to look at a real estate venture involving President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Republican critics in Congress thought there were some shady circumstances that needed to be examined. Starr began poking around and discovered some evidence of a relationship between President Clinton and a young 20-something White House intern.

A federal grand jury summoned the president to testify. The president took an oath to tell the whole truth to the grand jury — and then he lied about his relationship.

Ah-hah! GOP House members then cobbled together an impeachment proceeding that charged the president with perjury and obstruction of justice. The House impeached the president. The Senate held its trial and he was acquitted.

Will history repeat itself? I have no clue. My guess is that special counsel Mueller doesn’t yet know where his probe will lead.

These matters do have a way of growing legs. The statute gives Mueller considerable leeway in his pursuit of the truth. The president cannot fire him; he can, though, order the Justice Department to do so. Let’s hope that Donald Trump resists that impulse. I know that’s a tall order, given the self-proclaimed joy he gets when he fires people.

But the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, has picked a serious legal heavyweight to do some seriously heavy lifting.

It’s time now for Robert Mueller to get busy. Rapidly.

media news

Thank you, mainstream media, for doing your job

The media keep getting a pounding from those who hang nasty labels on them.

Enemy of the people. Biased. Unfair. Mean.

I want to give them a serious shout out for the job they have been doing in reporting some of the most explosive news stories in, oh, a couple of generations.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal … the big guns of the so-called “mainstream media” have served their craft well. They make those of us who toiled in that craft — and are doing so to this day — so very proud.

Donald J. Trump’s tenure as president might be in serious jeopardy. Why? Because big-city newspaper reporters and editors are telling the public what they need to hear about the president of the United States. They are reporting on incidents that could result in charges of obstruction of justice; they are chronicling events and reporting the news to the public that must always be informed about how the government is being run on its behalf.

A former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, said recently — and quite stupidly — that he is “personally offended” by the media. He just cannot stand reading negative news about the president and so, as is customary among some thin-skinned politicians, he blames the messenger. Gingrich ignores the undeniable fact that all of Trump’s wounds — every one of them — have been self-inflicted.

The president himself has labeled the media “the enemy of the American people.” Why? Again, because they are doing their job. They are reporting to the public the mistakes that the president is making. Trump’s senior political adviser, Stephen Bannon, has referred to the media as the “opposition party.” What absolute crap!

Conservative media outlets have waged war against the so-called “mainstream media” for years, using that very term as an epithet against media outlets that dare to tell the truth.

It’s far too early to know where all of this reporting will lead. As the current House speaker, Paul Ryan, has implored, “We need the facts” before making judgments.

I am going to rely on the media to keep presenting the facts. They make me proud. I plan to keep reading … and learning.

national news, political news

Oh, Mitt … you were so right about Trump

I posted this video once already. The events of the past few days and weeks, though, compel me to post it once again.

It is 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s assessment of Donald John Trump. It’s about 17 minutes long.

I won’t offer much analysis of what Mitt said. His words stand for themselves.

Suffice to say that Mitt Romney was correct to call Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.”

Recent events are proving just how correct he was when he made this speech.

Oh, brother.

national news, political news

Mueller pick enables Congress, POTUS to get back to work

One of my first takeaways from today’s blockbuster news about the appointment of a special counsel to probe the “Russia thing” suggests that Congress and the president can get back to actual work.

You know … governing!

Robert Mueller is going to lead the investigation into whether Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 election; he’ll look at whether Donald Trump asked former FBI director James Comey to shut down a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Russia connection; he might even find some other things we haven’t even thought of … yet.

You’ll recall that a former special counsel, Kenneth Starr, was tasked initially with examining a real estate deal involving Bill and Hillary Clinton and discovered that the president was having an “inappropriate” relationship with a young White House intern. The rest became history.

Mueller, himself a former FBI director, is an excellent choice to lead this probe. I give Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein high praise for making this choice.

Senators, House members and the president now can get back to arguing over some other things: health care, tax reform, infrastructure, immigration matters, North Korea, Syria, NATO.

We can argue ourselves hoarse over the merits of what Donald Trump wants to do. I don’t mind that debate continuing at full throttle.

This Russia matter and all its tendrils have strangled the government. For his part, Trump has made a mess of just about everything he has touched. Congressional leadership hasn’t acquitted itself much better, either.

Yes, House and Senate committees will continue to examine the “Russia thing” along with whatever Mueller uncovers. Let them pursue their charter as prescribed by congressional rules.

The rest of the House and the Senate — along with the guy who is president of the United States — ought to concentrate more fully on what they were sent to Washington, D.C., to do.

That is to govern.