Tag Archives: Donald Trump

International news, military news

Here’s a thought: Go after Assad’s house

U.S. military forces tonight launched a few dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syrian military targets.

Donald Trump ordered the strikes in retaliation for Syrian government forces’ use of chemical weapons on civilians, killing dozens of them, including children.

It was a reprehensible act. The thought occurs to me: The strikes hit military targets, but why not zero in on where the dictator, Bashar al-Assad, hangs his hat?

It’s not unprecedented. I recall when the Persian Gulf War started in late 1990. The first weapon was a Tomahawk cruise missile launched from the USS Wisconsin, the World War II-era battleship that had been brought back into active duty. The ship’s target? Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad!

Saddam commanded the Iraqi military that had invaded Kuwait. He served two roles in Iraq: head of state and the supreme commander of the Iraqi military. President George H.W. Bush, thus, considered Saddam to be a military target.

Assad is just as ham-handed a dictator as Saddam Hussein had become. He also has a tight rein on his military forces. Therefore, he is a military — as well as a political — figure.

We should hit Syrian military targets. What the Syrian government has done is reprehensible in the extreme.

It does nothing, though, without the approval of the dictator who is in charge.

Make the dictator a target, too.

national news, political news

Make recusal permanent, Rep. Nunes

U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes has recused himself “temporarily” from the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged connection to Russian government hackers.

Fine. Let’s make the recusal permanent, shall we?

Moreover, let’s work to institute an independent investigation into the potentially grave matter and take it completely out of the hands of partisan politicians.

Nunes chaired the Intelligence panel. Then he revealed he had some knowledge of “incidental surveillance” being done on Trump campaign officials. He ventured to the White House secretly and met in private with the president.

The former chairman managed to compromise his independence completely. After all, he had served on Trump’s transition team. From where I sit, he is too close to the subject of his committee’s investigation.

The Intelligence Committee chairmanship now falls to Mike Conaway, a Texas Republican. He pledges to carry the investigation forward.

I fear that won’t be good enough.

This matter is beginning to swallow up Congress as well as the White House. Politics is threatening to get in everyone’s way while the questions continue to surround the president, his campaign staff and even his governing administration.

Did the campaign collude with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election? Did the president defame former President Obama by accusing him falsely of ordering a wiretap prior to Trump taking office?

Republicans tend to give the president a pass on all of this; Democrats are quick to convict him of all of the above.

Independence is required to produce a thorough and unbiased investigation.

Nunes’ recusal is a start toward that end. Let’s finish it by handing it over to an independent counsel.

national news

Time to lube the ‘machine,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump’s “fine-tuned machine” has been misfiring almost since the jalopy rolled into the White House.

Now we hear that senior policy adviser Steven Bannon and the president’s son-in-law/adviser Jared Kushner are at each other’s throats almost daily.

Is this how a “fine-tuned machine” runs, Mr. President? Many of us out here in the peanut gallery don’t think that’s the case.

Trump pledged “best people”

The president vowed to surround himself with the “best people” ever assembled to run the government’s executive branch.

Bannon came on board after serving as editor of Breitbart News, the ultra-right wing media outlet. Kushner married well, as he is Ivanka Trump’s husband. Neither man has government experience. They’re both strong-willed, however, which might explain why they are fighting constantly.

Here’s another wrinkle.

Until this week, Bannon had a seat on the principals committee of the National Security Council. Then the president moved him off the panel.

Bannon’s been fighting with Kushner for weeks. The president loves his daughter and doesn’t want her husband injured while butting heads with Bannon.

Hmmm. Is there linkage between the bickering inside the West Wing and Bannon’s demotion from the principals committee?

Break out the lube oil, Mr. President.

legal news, national news

Sexual Assailant in Chief weighs in on O’Reilly

Donald Trump has declared to the world that Bill O’Reilly is a “good person.”

O’Reilly and Fox News Channel are fighting off allegations that the media star and his employer have engaged in sexual harassment against several women who have filed complaints.

So, what does the president of the United States think? He says O’Reilly is getting a bum rap, that he shouldn’t have settled those complaints for millions of bucks, that he should have taken the accusers to court to make them prove what they have alleged.

All this comes from someone who in 2005 was heard to say how he groped women, how he grabbed them by their private parts, how his star status enabled him to start kissing women.

To be fair, O’Reilly’s settlements with the women, along with what Fox News has shelled out, does suggest there’s fire under all this smoke.

The president of the United States, though, has a lot more important matters to ponder than whether his buddy O’Reilly is guilty of doing things to which Donald Trump has already admitted doing himself.

Stick to matters of state, Mr. Sexual Assailant in Chief.

International news

UN envoy says what Trump should say … about Russia

Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad gassed citizens, killing dozens of them.

The president of the United States condemns Assad, as he should do; then he lays the blame for the attack on the inaction of former President Barack Obama.

Then in wades the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, to say what should be said: Russia is complicit in this heinous action and must be punished.

My question: Why, oh why, cannot Donald John Trump muster the guts to speak ill of Russia in this regard?

The president continues to remain mum on Russian misbehavior. He cannot admit in public that the Russians hacked into our election system; he cannot agree that Vladimir Putin is a “killer”; he keeps wishing for a more cooperative relationship with Russia.

But, wait, Mr. President. The Russian are bankrolling Assad’s murderous regime in Syria. They are funding the dictator’s ability to obtain the murderous weapons he uses on his citizens.

Ambassador Haley speaks out

The U.N. Security Council is considering a resolution to condemn the Russians over this attack. Russia is one of the five permanent council members and has the authority to veto any such resolution. Where is the president on this one? Will he condemn the Russians if they veto a resolution that seeks to slap additional sanctions on them?

Ambassador Haley said this, according to The Hill: “Russia has shielded Assad from U.N. sanctions. If Russia has the influence in Syria that it claims it has, we need to see them use it,” Haley said at an emergency meeting of the council. “We need to see them put an end to these horrific acts. How many more children have to die before Russia cares.”

Mr. President, it’s your turn now. It’s time for you to “tell it like it is” concerning Russia.

national news, political news

Mr. Innuendo is at it again

Donald Trump, who is unafraid to toss out any innuendo imaginable, is at it again.

This time, the president says former national security adviser Susan Rice “may have” committed a crime.

His evidence? His substantiation? Oh, what the hell. He doesn’t have anything to offer. He just said it.

Rice’s so-called “crime” apparently occurred when he allegedly sought the identities of Trump campaign officials who were mentioned as possible targets of U.S. surveillance.

She served as national security adviser for President Obama. Rice has denied any involvement in this matter and has said she did not break any law.

The hits just keep coming

That won’t stop Trump, who continues to exhibit recklessness as it regards others’ reputation. All he had to say when the subject came up would have been, “I won’t comment any further on that matter until we get to the bottom of what happened. But, no-o-o-o. He had to pop off yet again.

However, he did say: “I think it’s going to be the biggest story.  It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”

Kind of like the wiretapping ordered by Barack Obama, yes?

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.