Tag Archives: Donald Trump

military news, national news

Trump makes sound national security move … finally!

I have been highly critical of Donald J. Trump’s assembling of his national security team.

But then — what do you know? — the president does something that makes eminent sense. He has removed his political hack/senior adviser Steve Bannon from the National Security Council and has elevated two men who should have been seated on the NSC’s principals committee in the first place.

Good call, Mr. President. May it be the first of many.

Bannon had no business serving on the principals committee. He is the former Breitbart News editor. He has the president’s ear on all matters political. His national security experience is next to zero.

Trump also demoted his homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, and elevated Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford. They now will be regular attendees of the principal committee.

Oh, there’s more. National security adviser H.R. McMaster has received full authority to set the agendas for meetings of the principals committee.

Someone got hold of the president’s ear and advised him in the strongest language possible of the folly of seeming to politicize the NSC’s principals committee — which is what Bannon’s presence on the committee did.

If there’s any aspect of a president’s duties that demands non-political consideration, it must be matters dealing with national security.

Donald Trump is entitled to have a top-drawer political hand giving him political advice. That adviser doesn’t need to be anywhere near where national security concerns are discussed.

national news, political news

Polls shouldn’t matter, but they do to Trump

Public opinion polls shouldn’t really be on the top of politicians’ minds. Unless you’re the president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump told us incessantly during his 2016 presidential campaign how the polls had him up against his Republican primary foes, then against Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The man who would become president made polls important.

Now we have this: The RealClearPolitics  poll of polls — the one that averages all the major polling outfits — shows the president’s standing among Americans is plummeting.

The RCP poll has gone below 40 percent approval among Americans of the job the president is doing.

Ouch, man!

The latest Quinnipiac poll puts Trump’s approval rating at 35 percent. Reuters/Ipsos has Trump at 44 percent. You get the idea. His numbers are all over the place, but all of them combined and averaged out put him at 39.8 percent.

Trump isn’t saying much about the polls these days. Imagine my surprise … not!

Were it not for the candidate himself making such an issue of polls when they were casting him in a positive light, I likely wouldn’t bother with this latest bit of bad poll news.

It’s all your fault, Mr. President.

International news, national news

No, ISIS … POTUS is no ‘idiot’

It’s one thing for Americans to disparage their own president, even to call him unflattering names.

When a foreign power does it — let alone a mortal enemy of the United States and the rest of the civilized world — well, that’s quite another matter.

The Islamic State has issued some kind of scathing statement in which it refers to Donald John Trump as an “idiot.” The ISIS statement says, in part: “… There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is,”

ISIS has it wrong

An “idiot” does not parlay a stake in a business handed down to him by his father into a multibillion-dollar real estate enterprise. An “idiot” doesn’t produce a successful reality TV show, nor does an “idiot” run a successful beauty pageant.

There. That’s about as close as I’m going to come to saying something positive about the current president of the United States.

He is naïve, ignorant about the complexities of the government he runs; he is morally unfit to hold the office he occupies; he speaks clumsily; he bereft of core governing principles.

An idiot?

No. Far from it.

What is troubling to this American is to hear such a description coming from a terrorist organization that beheads prisoners, kills innocent victims, hides behind children, sends suicide bombers to terrorize others — all in the name of Islam. These are religious perverts who have no right to speak for true-blue adherents to a great religion.

Perverting that religion sounds, if you’ll pardon the use of the term, like the action of a group of idiots.

Put another way, Trump well might be an SOB, but he’s our SOB.

International news

Stop the blame game, Mr. POTUS

Leadership doesn’t involve blaming someone else for problems one inherits.

So, what does Donald John Trump do? He lays the blame for the Syrian gas attack on civilians on the inaction of his predecessor, Barack Obama. The president calls Obama’s “weakness” in dealing with Syria for the heinous act that occurred at the hand of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.

What about the here and now?

The president rightly calls the action reprehensible. But what is the current occupant of the White House going to do about it?

I must stipulate that I am acutely aware of the many times President Obama laid blame on his predecessor for the financial collapse he inherited when he took office in January 2009. The new president, though, then got to work and sought to stimulate the economy to prevent a total collapse of its underpinnings.

I am waiting for the current president to assert his own world view  and to deal forthrightly with the Middle East crises that he inherited from Obama — and the many men who preceded both of them as president.

Trump’s assigning of blame dates back to President Obama’s failure to act on Syria’s crossing the “red line” when it used chemical weapons in a previous action. OK, I get that.

The here and now, though, requires leadership that looks forward and ceases blaming others.

national news, political news

It’s the messenger, man, not the message

The White House issued the following statement to commemorate Sexual Abuse Awareness Month:

“At the heart of our country is the emphatic belief that every person has unique and infinite value. We dedicate each April to raising awareness about sexual abuse and recommitting ourselves to fighting it. Women, children, and men have inherent dignity that should never be violated.

“According to the Department of Justice, on average there are more than 300,000 instances of rape or other sexual assault that afflict our neighbors and loved ones every year. Behind these painful statistics are real people whose lives are profoundly affected, at times shattered, and who are invariably in need of our help, commitment, and protection.

“As we recognize National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, we are reminded that we all share the responsibility to reduce and ultimately end sexual violence. As a Nation, we must develop meaningful strategies to eliminate these crimes, including increasing awareness of the problem in our communities, creating systems that protect vulnerable groups, and sharing successful prevention strategies.”

That is a perfectly fine statement about a horrific problem in this country, indeed the world.

The problem with the message, though, is the messenger. Donald J. Trump is now president of the United States. He lives in the White House and runs the government that has just issued this appropriate and moving statement.

His record, though, calls just about every aspect of this statement into question. Does the president really and truly believe it? He didn’t write it, but it was issued under his name.

Do you remember during the 2016 presidential campaign that “Access Hollywood” video that went viral, the one where candidate Trump boasted about grabbing women by their private parts? Do you recall how he told Billy Bush how it’s OK to just start kissing women?

This man admitted to committing sexual abuse. Voters elected him anyway.

Rest assured. None of this individual’s personal history is going to go unnoticed, particularly when the White House issues statements that — in effect — condemn the boss’s conduct before he moved into the people’s house.

legal news, national news, political news

Senate readies for ‘nuclear’ attack on rules

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All this hubbub over whether to deploy the “nuclear option” to get a Supreme Court justice confirmed has my head spinning.

My emotions are terribly mixed.

Here is where we stand:

* The U.S. Senate Committee has recommended that Neil Gorsuch be confirmed to the Supreme Court; the panel voted along partisan lines. Republicans voted “yes,” Democrats voted “no.”

* Democrats are set to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination as payback to their Republican “friends” for blocking an earlier appointment, again on partisan grounds.

* Senate rules require Supreme Court nominees to garner at least 60 votes. Republicans at this moment don’t have enough votes to reach the 60-vote threshold — and break a Democratic filibuster.

* Republicans, thus, are pondering whether to “go nuclear” and change the rules to allow only a simple majority to approve a high court nominee.

Ohhhh, what to do?

We’ve already stipulated that Democratic senators don’t want Gorsuch seated if only because of the steamroll job GOP senators did on Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama nominated to the court to succeed the late Antonin Scalia.

Why the emotional conflict?

I happen to believe in presidential prerogative. I believe the president’s selection deserves greater consideration than the Senate’s constitutional right to reject an appointment, particularly if the appointee is “well qualified,” as the American Bar Association has determined about Gorsuch.

But my belief in presidential prerogative is tempered a good bit by the outrage I share with Democratic senators over the way Republican senators stonewalled Garland’s nomination, how they played politics by saying the next appointment belonged to “the next president.”

They were as wrong as they could be in denying President Obama the right to select someone, who I feel compelled to add is every bit as qualified to serve on the high court as Neil Gorsuch.

Should the Republican majority throw its weight around once again by engaging in that so-called “nuclear option” and change the rules to suit their own agenda?

Let me think for a moment about that one.

No. They shouldn’t!

media news

45th POTUS keeps trying to rewrite the rules

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Listen up, Donald John “Smart Person” Trump.

You cannot tell major media organizations which news to cover and which to ignore. The U.S. Constitution — the document with which you are patently unfamiliar — simply doesn’t allow presidents of the United States to coerce a “free press.”

It’s in the First Amendment. The founders had crafted the Constitution with those articles, then they started to amend the government framework. So they started with 10 civil liberties they wanted to protect.

That First Amendment? It protects freedom to worship, freedom to assemble peaceably to protest the government and — yep! — the freedom of the press to report the news.

NBC News believes the Russian hacking story is important enough to cover fully and completely.

It doesn’t please you, Mr. President? That’s tough dookey, sir. It doesn’t matter whether you’re unhappy with the way the television network does its job.

And quit the tweeting, too

You keep blazing away on your Twitter feed with that juvenile nonsense. You act more like a teenager than the leader of the free world. And do you actually believe that NBC News or any media outlet is going to do what you want just because you’re the president and you can say whatever the hell you feel like saying?

That’s not how it works in this country.

Just so you know, I just watched a great PBS special on KLRU-TV, based out of Austin, Texas. It told us plenty about the presidency, the White House and the families who have occupied “the people’s house.”

One of your predecessors, President Lyndon Johnson, was ravaged by protesters during the Vietnam War. What do you suppose the president said at the time. He said he wanted to ensure that presidents always work to preserve the right to dissent, to disagree with decisions made in the Oval Office. “I know all about dissent,” LBJ said.

You are occupying the Oval Office now, Mr. President. The dissent? The disagreement? The occasional anger? Get used to it.

Oh, and quit trying to bully the media.

The Constitution protects them from people like you. Honest. It’s in there. In the First Amendment. You ought to read it.

media news, national news, political news

No one saw this ‘trainwreck’? Not … exactly

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Donald J. Trump’s administration has demonstrated with amazing clarity what many of us believed all along: The president does not know how to govern.

The Los Angeles Times has just published the first of a series of editorials in which the newspaper proclaims that no one saw the trainwreck that would occur.

I beg to differ.

Dishonesty reigns in the White House

Here is part of what the Times wrote: “What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.”

The myriad problems that are plaguing the president — and the presidency — appear to be so much a result of self-inflicted ignorance and hubris.

At some levels, Trump is governing the way he said he would. He boasted that “I alone” can repair what he said was broken.

That is not how the founders structured this government of ours. Then again, the president doesn’t know about that, because he appears to demonstrate no interest in learning about what those great men envisioned for the government they created.

How will the president view the criticism that the LA Times has leveled at him? Oh, he’ll no doubt tweet something about how the paper is “failing,” or how it relies on “fake news,” apparently with no self-awareness that he became the king of fake news when he continued to promote the lie that Barack Obama was born overseas and wasn’t qualified constitutionally to serve as president.

The LA Times — if you’ll allow me to borrow a phrase — is “telling it like it is.”

national news, political news

Hillary’s back? Please, no!

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I have terribly mixed feelings about seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton climbing back into the arena.

First of all, she should have been elected president of the United States in 2016. She wasn’t. She squandered every single opportunity that stood before her, starting with the quality of the fellow to whom she lost the election.

Donald J. Trump is unfit for the office he occupies. But he’s occupying it. Not Hillary.

She shouldn’t run again … ever!

“She’s always been someone who gets out there and fights for what she thinks is right,” one former Clinton campaign staffer told The Hill.

“She’s striking an appropriate balance. She still has an appreciation that she’s not the face of the Democratic Party and people don’t want her to be … but having worked for her and having seen how hard she fights, I’d be disappointed if she spent the rest of her career in the woods.”

I get that she isn’t exactly positioning herself for another presidential run. That’s fine. She shouldn’t. She need not run for the highest office ever again.

Can she a voice of some sort? Can she speak on behalf of Americans — most of whom who voted in 2016 cast their ballots for her — who want to resist whatever it is that Trump wants to do? I suppose so.

I happen to subscribe to the prevailing political theory that the Democratic Party needs to find the freshest face it can find in 2020. I’m pretty sure the Democrats will find one.

As for Hillary, well, she has had a hell of a run in a lengthy public service career. First lady of Arkansas, then of the United States; a U.S. senator from New York; a consequential stint as secretary of state; then a major-party presidential nomination.

OK, so she didn’t win the big prize. Time should enable her to look back on her life and give her a chance to relish all that she was able to accomplish.

Maybe there’s more in store for her. I just hope it doesn’t include another run for the presidency.

national news, political news

Uh, Mr. POTUS? Photo ops are meant to convey something

Dear Mr. President,

That was some stunt you pulled today.

You called the media into the White House to watch you sign a couple of executive orders concerning international trade enforcement.

Then one of the reporters fired off a question about Michael Flynn. Your response? You turned tail and ran from the room. Why didn’t you stay long enough to sign the damn EOs?

This was supposed to be a positive photo op for you and your struggling administration. Then someone poses a tricky question — and you provide yet another kind of photo op, one that won’t play nearly as positively as the one you intended.

It was fascinating to watch the vice president acknowledge immediately what was going on and how it would look.

You probably don’t care what I think — given that I live out here in Trump Country, but I have a decidedly different view of the job you’re doing from the neighbors on my street. I’ll tell you anyway.

Every time you perform stunts like the one you performed today, you send chilling messages that there really and truly might be a flame under all the smoke being generated by that Russian hacking story.

We know that you gave Gen. Flynn the boot as your national security adviser because of questions swirling about his Russia relationships. I actually think you made the right call there, despite my belief that Gen. Flynn shouldn’t have held the post in the first place.

You have photo ops and then there are photo ops.

Mr. President, you need to answer the questions. Definitively, with clarity and precision — if you are able to dispel the chilling notion among many of us that there might be something to this Russian “collusion” story.