Tag Archives: 2020 election

media news

Yep, it’s ‘Anybody But Trump in 2020’

I believe the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel is on to something with its declared intent to support whomever the Democratic Party nominates in the upcoming campaign for the presidency of the United States.

The Twitter hashtag #AnybodyButTrump2020 is getting a lot of views out there. I understand it’s the fifth most tweeted hashtag in the Twitter universe.

Whatever …

I saw the editorial Tuesday as the president was preparing to deliver his official re-election kickoff speech in central Florida. I was struck by the same thing that has amazed so many media watchers: How can the newspaper make such a declaration so early in the electoral process?

According to the Sentinel’s editorial, it’s easy: “After 2 1/2 years we’ve seen enough” of Donald Trump, the paper wrote. “Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption and especially the lies,” the Sentinel opined.

How many ways can I endorse the Sentinel’s views on the president. And they come from a newspaper with a long history of endorsing Republicans for president (mostly).

I suppose the variation comes because Trump only masquerades as a Republican. He belongs to a party that has been historically suspicious of Russian leaders. The GOP has long been a champion of free trade and a staunch foe of economic protectionism. Indeed, Republicans helped a Democratic president enact landmark civil rights and voting rights laws in the 1960s; does anyone believe Donald Trump stands for those principles today?

The lying is the serious deal breaker for the Sentinel. The paper said it isn’t surprised that Trump would lie. It is appalled at the frequency and the severity of the lies.

They have set a remarkable template for how other media organizations might consider when they deliberate over whom to recommend for the presidency.

For good measure, I want to share once again the Sentinel’s editorial with this link.

I now want to thank the Orlando Sentinel editorial board for speaking the truth about the charlatan who is masquerading as our head of state. May the newspaper’s words resonate across the land.

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news

POTUS launches re-election bid with … a return to old gripes

That was some re-election relaunch by the president of the United States.

Donald Trump ventured to Orlando, Fla., to launch his bid officially for a second term in the White House. Did he unveil any grand new proposals? Did he provide a vision for the future? Did he tell us where he wants to lead the country?

Umm. That would no on all three counts.

Indeed, he managed to spend about 90 seconds crowing about an economy he has called the best in the nation’s history.

Then he returned to plenty of familiar turf. He brought up Hillary Clinton’s name dozens of times; yes, that Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated in the 2016 presidential election.

He ripped into the “Democrat Party,” saying it wants to destroy the nation “as we know it.”

Let’s not forget the “fake news” media, the journalists he calls the “enemy of the people.” They received presidential broadsides as well from the lecturn in Orlando.

There you go. The president is seemingly set to rely on the same themes that got him elected in the first place in his quest for a second term in the White House.

There will be more name-calling, more insults, more invective, more gloom and doom, more baseless boasting, more lies, more self-aggrandizement.

Who is the president’s audience? It’s his base, the 41 or so percent of Americans who hang on his every misstatement, every lie. They don’t care that he doesn’t know how to behave in public. They give him a pass on the insults he has hurled at a reporter with a serious physical disability, or his admitted groping of women, or the hush money he paid to a porn star with whom he had a fling some years ago.

He is “making America great again.” How is he doing that? I guess the insults he hurls at allies is one way.

Good grief! This is the man who wants another four years in the nation’s highest and most venerated public office?

Give me strength.

I’ll leave it to Jeff Greenfield, the veteran broadcast journalist and commentator who’s seen a few of these re-election speeches over the years. Take it away, sir.

Read Greenfield’s take here.

Greenfield concludes with this: And if you were looking for a single grace note, a single appeal to the better angels of our nature, a single note of humility, a single note of simple ordinary decency … well, just go to YouTube and spend a few minutes with Ronald Reagan.

I believe I will do that.

media news, national news

Anybody but Trump? How ’bout that?

Call this a serious kick in the gut.

Donald Trump is venturing to Orlando, Fla., tonight to inaugurate his 2020 re-election campaign. So, what does that community’s newspaper do? It published an editorial today that declared it would endorse “any Democrat” who runs against the Republican president next year.

Read the editorial here.

It’s good reading if you’re interested in understanding how a major media organization reaches its editorial conclusion.

The Orlando Sentinel remains a significant media presence in central Florida. “After 2 1/2 years, we’ve seen enough” of Trump to determine that he isn’t worthy of the newspaper’s endorsement for re-election.

The chaos, the lying, the “school yard insults,” the self-aggrandizement, the corruption are too much for the newspaper’s editorial board. “There’s no pretending” that there is a mystery whom the paper would recommend for its readers, it said. That’s why the Sentinel has declared its intention to recommend any Democrat who emerges from the crowded field of contenders.

It’s the lying that is consummate deal-breaker for the Sentinel, which writes: Trump’s successful assault on truth is the great casualty of this presidency, followed closely by his war on decency.

What’s more, according to the Sentinel: Trump has diminished our standing in the world. He reneges on deals, attacks allies and embraces enemies.

I know what’s going to happen tonight. Trump is likely to hold up the Sentinel’s rebuke as some sort of triumph over the “enemy of the people.” He will contend he doesn’t care what the newspaper’s editorial board believes about the disgraceful manner in which he has conducted himself. He will fill his own mind with the delusion that all is well with him, the country, the presidency and the world all because he arrived on the scene in 2016 to save us from ourselves.

I am one American who embraces the Orlando Sentinel’s decision to avoid pussyfooting around the conclusion it has reached: Donald Trump needs to go … away

national news

Trump launches re-election bid? Wait … what’s he been doing?

So much about Donald Trump’s time as president has confounded and confused me.

The fascination of the hard right wing of the Republican Party to this clown; the policy pronouncements via Twitter; the revolving door in the West Wing of the White House; the insults, innuendo and invective he hurls at our international allies.

Now he says he’s going to “launch” his 2020 effort to be re-elected tonight.

Wait just a doggone minute! What has this guy been doing since the moment he took the oath of office in January 2017? To my way of thinking, he’s been running full bore for re-election during his entire term.

Now he is launching the “official” start of his effort? Someone needs to explain to me how that works.

He’s heading for Orlando, Fla., to speak to his admirers. They swoon and fawn over his idiotic pronouncements. They will guffaw and holler when he hurls insults at the large field of Democrats competing for the chance to run against him next year. We might even hear some “Lock her up!” chants if the president dredges up the email matter involving his 2016 presidential opponents, Hillary Rodham Clinton; and, without doubt, he is likely to lead the chant.

Well, I guess Trump’s official re-election effort will commence with more of what we’ve been hearing since the beginning of this clown’s tenure in office.

We have “only” 503 days until the next election. My dear mother used to counsel me to avoid wishing my life away. Still, I hope the time speeds by.

national news

Yes, Sen. Cornyn, we need a law

I believe I will disagree with John Cornyn, the senior Republican U.S. senator from Texas.

He said the nation doesn’t need a law that requires political candidates to report foreign interference in our elections to the FBI. Cornyn said it should be understood that politicians should report foreign interference to authorities. Cornyn said he would do so if such an attack occurred in an election in which he would be involved. Good for him. I’m glad he would do the right thing.

However, we have a president of the United States who now admits to flouting normal procedure at every turn. Donald Trump told ABC News that if a foreign country — such as “Norway,” as Trump said — had information a political opponent, he would “look at it.”

The Senate sought to enact legislation that would have required candidates to report such interference to authorities, but it was blocked by freshman Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

Cornyn doesn’t see a problem with Blackburn blocking the bill. According to the Texas Tribune: “The simple answer is call the FBI and let them investigate it,” Cornyn said. “We don’t need to pass a law to do that.”

In a perfect political world, by all means you don’t need such a law. However, this old world of ours is far from perfect, as the election of Donald Trump has demonstrated with remarkable clarity. Trump has denied any Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now he says he would allow it in future elections and he “might” notify the FBI.

Cornyn says we don’t need a law to prevent such a thing?

I believe we do need a law, Sen. Cornyn.

economic news

No, Mr. POTUS, economy doesn’t hinge on your re-election

Mr. President, you need to stop the braggadocio. As in right now!

I know you don’t heed this advice, but I have to get it off my chest.

You have declared that the fate and future of our nation’s economic well-being depends on your re-election. I read where you tweeted some nonsense about how the market will crash in unprecedented ways if you lose the election next year.

C’mon! Knock it off! If the economy craters it will do so on the basis of a lot of factors that have nothing to do with your re-election. It might have everything to do with the idiotic policies you seek to enact. Starting with those tariffs on imported goods from Mexico.

Your delusion is sounding more like desperation, if you want my humble view of it.

You’ve boasted about having that “big brain,” about how you know the “best words,” how you cut the “best deals,” how you surround yourself with the “best people” and how you are a “stable genius” who attended the “best schools” in human history.

If you were as great and glorious as you say you are, why do so many of us out here — even in Flyover Country — want to see you walk out of the Oval Office for the final time?

Yeah, I know. You have your supporters. God bless ’em. They see things differently than I do, or the way most Americans apparently do.

Just cool it with the bragging and self-aggrandizement. You work for us, Mr. President. Let us decide how you are doing. I am one of your bosses who wants you replaced.

national news

FEC boss says, ‘Wait, Mr. POTUS; that’s illegal!’

Donald Trump has said openly and in front of the whole world that he would “look at” negative information about a political opponent that came to him from a foreign nation, even a foreign government.

Except …

The head of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, has declared with equal vigor that accepting such assistance is illegal … and unconstitutional.

As The Hill reported: Doubling down on why that’s unconstitutional, Weintraub said “this is not a novel concept,” adding that “our Founding Fathers sounded the alarm about ‘foreign Interference, Intrigue and Influence.'”

Great mother of God in heaven. What in the world is careening around in the vacuous skull of the president of the United States?

He has signaled to the entire world that he would possibly accept such foreign assistance, that he wouldn’t necessarily inform the FBI, despite what the FBI director, Christopher Wray, has said what the president should do, which is tell the FBI.

Weintraub said via Twitter: “Let me make something 100 percent clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.”

I shall add that Weintraub isn’t some shmuck political hack. She holds degrees from Yale and Harvard Law School. Let me be clear: She knows of which she speaks.

Donald Trump is posing, as former VP Joe Biden said, “an existential threat” to our system of government, our values, our way of life, our political norms.

Astonishingly, the president’s own reckless and feckless mouth has delivered that danger to our doorstep.

FBI

Is this the ‘impeachable’ moment?

Can it be that Donald Trump has just scripted his own impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives?

I am wondering if his declaration today to ABC News that he would be willing to break the law if a foreign power produced negative information about a political opponent while he is running for re-election as president of the United States. Trump said he would “look at” the information and wouldn’t feel the need to report it to the FBI.

FBI director Christopher Wray just a month ago told Congress that anyone who got such info must report it to his agency.

Trump told George Stephanopoulos that “the FBI director is wrong.”

Who do you trust? The lying, amoral, unethical head of state or the career professional prosecutor and law enforcement official?

I’m going to stand with Christopher Wray.

As for the House of Representatives and, yes, the Republican-controlled Senate, they should, too.

The question of the moment is this: Will they?

national news, national security

Stand firm, FBI director Wray

I want to declare right here and right now my strong desire for FBI director Christopher Wray to stay where he is, in charge of the world’s premier law enforcement/investigative agency.

You see, Wray has just been undermined by the man who appointed him to his office, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Trump told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that he would accept information about a political foe presented to him by a foreign power, even a hostile foreign power, such as, oh, Russia.

Director Wray, though, has said specifically and categorically that any political candidate whose campaign receives such information must turn it over the FBI.

Trump said when reminded of Wray’s view by Stephanopoulos that “The FBI director is wrong.”

There you have it. The president once again is refusing directly to back the wisdom cited by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Do not go anywhere, Christopher Wray.

Yes, it likely will be a trying time for Wray as the 2020 presidential election gets into full swing. The Russians attacked our electoral system in 2016. Wray’s predecessor as FBI director, James Comey, began looking deeply into “The Russia Thing” and got fired by the president.

The FBI needs a strong leader. Christopher Wray appears to be a grownup and a law enforcement and legal pro. I realize that an ethical professional would find it trying, indeed, to work in a government administration led by someone without an scintilla of ethical understanding.

I just want to beseech Christopher Wray. The nation needs this man. Badly.

Russian attack

Trump would do what? He’d take info on foe from foreign power?

Donald Trump has spoken words I never thought I ever would hear come out of the mouth of a president of the United States of America.

He has told a U.S. TV news anchor that if a foreign power brought information to him or his campaign about a political opponent that he would “take it.” Yes, he would accept that information.

Oh, and he also might notify the FBI that someone had delivered him “opposition research” on a political opponent.

Trump sat in the Oval Office and took questions from George Stephanopoulos, who asked him what he would do if a foreign power sought to interfere with a U.S. election the way the Russians did in 2016. Trump didn’t call it “interference.” He compared it to what members of Congress get all the time from groups doing “oppo research” on political foes.

No. It isn’t the same.

This revelation came from the president of the United States. He already has been investigated at great length over whether his 2016 campaign accepted dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump to this very day apparently sees nothing wrong with a foreign power — in the case of Russia, a hostile foreign power — interfering in our electoral system.

FBI director Christopher Wray said any candidate should report such action immediately to the FBI, Stephanopoulos told Trump. “The FBI director is wrong,” Trump responded.

This is unbelievable! It’s incredible! It’s, um, unpatriotic!

There might be anything illegal about accepting such information from a foreign power. However, isn’t there any sense of whether it is right?

Where is the president’s sense of ethics? No need to answer that. I know where it is. It doesn’t exist anywhere inside the man who occupies the Oval Office.

I guess we might be able to presume that if the Russians are going to repeat their 2016 dirty work in the 2020 election that the president would be just fine with it.

Astonishing!