Tag Archives: Donald Trump

So many lies, so much damage

The president of the United States has lied with such recklessness since entering the political world, it’s becoming difficult to single out which lie has done the most damage.

I believe I should look at one lie that on the surface seems the least consequential, but which has produced the most serious consequence.

It was his pledge to stop tweeting once he became president.

Yep, Donald J. Trump made that pledge. I cannot remember when he did, but he did. He said he would be more “presidential” once he actually took the oath, settled into the big chair in the Oval Office and started signing executive orders to do the things he promised to do.

Has he kept that pledge? Hah! No.

What has been the result? It’s been pretty far-reaching. I’ll start with the most recent tweet, which he fired off more than a week ago early on one morning. It was where he said Barack Obama “wiretapped” his office at Trump Tower. He said his predecessor did it, that he broke the law, that he committed a felony. He called it a “fact.”

Trump’s tweet has ignited a firestorm. I mean, it’s a serious conflict in Washington, D.C. He has generated bipartisan criticism, although the volume has been much louder among Democrats than Republicans.

Is this Twitter tempest ever going to end? Is this how he’s going to conduct foreign and domestic policy, through the use of a social medium in which he makes statements without consulting his senior staff?

Didn’t this clown say he would surround himself with the “smartest people” in the history of humankind? If that is what he has done, why aren’t they telling this idiot to cease and desist with the Twitter nonsense? Maybe they are … and he’s not listening.

The liar in chief is out of control.

You want any more examples of how dangerous this behavior can become in a world fraught with serious peril? We are witnessing it as it is happening.

CBO numbers are in: not good for AHCA

Donald Trump promised that no one would lose their health insurance under a re-crafted plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The Congressional Budget Office’s verdict? Wrong, Mr. President!

There goes a major campaign promise.

As predicted, the Trump administration dismisses the CBO report, which is supposed to be the gold standard in determining the fiscal viability of sweeping, landmark public policies.

The CBO projects that 24 million more Americans will lose their health insurance by 2026 under the American Health Care Act. Not good, right?

Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Tom Price — a leading critic of the Affordable Care Act — says the CBO report is incomplete and inaccurate. Well, of course he would say that.

As the New York Times has reported: “The much-anticipated judgment by Capitol Hill’s official scorekeeper did not back up President Trump’s promise of providing health care for everyone and was likely to fuel the concerns of moderate Republicans. Next year, it said, the number of uninsured Americans would be 14 million higher than expected under current law.”

The president has said “no one” would lose their health insurance. If it were anyone else, I would stand and applaud such a declaration. The problem, though, with this president is that I cannot trust that his word is true, that he’s actually speaking from his heart.

I just do not know any longer when or whether he’s telling the truth.

Therefore, I shall rely on the analyses of others, such as the CBO.

***

One more point …

The White House doesn’t want the AHCA to be nicknamed Trumpcare, much the way the ACA was given the name of President Barack Obama, who signed the ACA into law in 2010 and has become identified as the former president’s signature piece of domestic legislation.

Well, too bad. Trumpcare it is!

The Republican leadership in Congress has crafted it. The president has signed on to it.

Let’s hang the president’s name on it.

So, ‘wiretap’ doesn’t mean wiretap?

The White House has issued one of the strangest “clarifications” in modern political history.

It was that Donald J. Trump didn’t mean “wiretap” when he referred to it in a series of tweets regarding an allegation he leveled at President Barack Obama.

He had said that Obama had ordered a “wiretap” of his Trump Tower offices during the 2016 presidential campaign. Yes, he used  a very close variation of that word.

But, but, but …

The White House said today he didn’t actually mean “wiretap.”.

Do you follow me? I didn’t think so. I cannot follow it, either.

Here’s one of Trump’s tweets: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

OK, so he didn’t use the word “wiretap” in this tweet. “Tapp my phones,” though, means the same thing. Doesn’t it? I thought so.

Oh, but no-o-o-o. The president didn’t mean it, according to the White House press office.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has asked for a bit more time to provide proof — presuming that some might exist — that backs up the president’s scurrilous accusation that former President Obama broke the law.

Time to put up or shut up … Mr. President?

Today might be the day when the president of the United States delivers the goods on what he knows — allegedly — about a so-called wiretap ordered by President Obama on the Trump Tower offices.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee reportedly has sent a letter to the White House asking for evidence that Donald J. Trump has to back up his allegation that Obama tapped the New York campaign offices to search for proof that Trump was colluding with Russian government officials who sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

Trump hasn’t provided any proof. House Intelligence panel officials want to see it.

Is this a firm deadline? Ohhh, probably not. But the president needs to provide proof of the incendiary accusation he has leveled against his immediate predecessor. He has accused Barack Obama of breaking the law, committing a felony. That’s what this clown does; he says things to garner headlines without any substantiation.

Absent any proof we are left to wonder out loud about what the president is trying to do. Why in the world does he do these things?

Is this act alone — a reckless accusation that the former president has broken the law — an impeachable offense? There’s some chatter that, yes, it is. I am not prepared to jump on that haywagon.

This president, though, has demonstrated graphically a willingness to say anything, to damage anyone. He has yet to demonstrate an ability to corroborate his fiery rhetoric.

Melania is MIA on her key issue as first lady

Melania Trump made a big speech during her husband’s campaign for the presidency.

She said she wanted to craft a theme as first lady that dealt with cyber bullying. Too many children are being bullied over the Internet and that if Donald Trump were elected president, she would take up the important cause of ending the scourge. She would use her position as first lady as a bully pulpit.

That’s what she said.

Since then? Well, she’s gone missing in action.

Yes, yes. I know about all the snickering and tittering about Mrs. Trump’s first lady theme.

“You need to start at home, Mrs. Trump. Tell that husband of yours to quit using Twitter to insult others,” came some of the response. I took note of the irony, too, in this blog at the time of her declaration.

Setting all that aside, the issue is an important one and the first lady of the United States — whoever she is — maintains a high-level platform to deal squarely and forthrightly with the key issues of our time.

Cyber bullying is one of them.

I’m still waiting to hear about the formation of a task force. Or about high-powered meetings with Internet executives at the White House. To my knowledge, the first lady hasn’t scheduled highly visible meetings with educators about what they are doing in their schools to deal with this crisis.

The first lady has dropped off the grid. She has kept a low profile while her husband continues to make outrageous statements about his political foes, his immediate predecessor, the media and anyone else who says critical things about him.

I am one American who would welcome at least a temporary diversion from all this chaos and madness. The first lady pledged to use her office for a seriously important public cause.

Many of us are still waiting, Mrs. Trump.

McCain: Prove it or drop it, Mr. President

John McCain is demonstrating yet again that he still might be angry at Donald J. Trump’s insulting assertion during the 2016 campaign that the former Navy pilot is a “war hero only because he was captured” by the enemy during the Vietnam War.

Whatever the motive, the Arizona Republican U.S. senator is on point with this declaration: Either provide proof that former President Obama wiretapped your offices during the 2016 campaign or retract it.

The president has done nothing to suggest he has a shred of evidence to back up his scurrilous contention that Obama ordered a wiretap. He has essentially defamed his predecessor by accusing him of committing a felony.

Trump has all the intelligence capabilities available to him to deliver the goods. He hasn’t. Absent any “goods,” he needs to take it all back, admit what many of us know already — that he sought to divert attention from the Russia election-meddling matter.

But, wait! The two things — allegations of Russian meddling and the wiretap allegation — are related!

Can we trust POTUS to tell the truth — ever?

Now that we’ve pretty much established that Donald J. Trump is a serial liar, let’s ponder what this might mean as he talks to other world leaders.

Do they believe him when he pledges the United States to a certain policy? Can they trust that his word is good? Will they be able to conduct their own policies knowing that the U.S. president has their back?

Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that his word is good — until he changes his mind.

He promised to stop using Twitter once he became president; he said millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election; Trump allegedly witnessed Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11; he said he “knows more about ISIS than the generals”; Trump asked several federal prosecutors appointed by his predecessor to stay on the job, then demanded their resignations; he has accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his campaign offices.

He once said “the shows” provide him with all the knowledge he needs to deal with foreign crises. Trump has said he is his own primary adviser, that he has a “great mind.”

There’s more examples to offer. But in all of those, either he told a flat-out lie or has failed to produce a shred of proof to back up anything he has said.

How does the president of the United States take that record of prevarication to the negotiating table with other foreign leaders? And how do they know whether to believe a single thing this individual says?

Ladies and gents, we have elected a patently untrustworthy man as president.

Congress sees spike in approval rating … what gives?

 

Given my occasional fascination with public opinion polls, I want to share an observation about RealClearPolitics’ average of polls.

It is that public approval of Congress has spiked up about 10 percentage points since Donald J. Trump became president.

Why is that? I think it’s a legitimate question. I might have the answer, although I could be coming at this from deep left field.

It well might be that the public sees the president of the United States as the greater threat to the nation’s stability. RCP’s average of polls puts Congress’s approval rating at more than 22 percent. During the eight years that Barack Obama was president, the RCP poll average usually pegged Congress’s approval in the low teens, occasionally dipping into single digits.

Might it be that the public saw Congress less favorably during President Obama’s time because respondents were concerned about the continual obstruction orchestrated by the Republican Party leadership?

Moreover, might it now be that the RCP polling reflects a public view that Congress can act as a check against the current president’s reckless rhetoric and fickle policy pronouncements?

Just thinking out loud, dear reader.

Your thoughts?

Get ready for more impeachment talk

Impeaching a president of the United States isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires a stout gut among those who bring it, not to mention the target of such a drastic action.

The bar must be high. It must have a solid basis on which to make such a move.

Where am I going with this? I have this sinking feeling that the current president well might find himself in the crosshairs of those who want to bring such an action against him.

We’re hearing a growing — but still muted — rumbling in D.C. about the prospect of Donald J. Trump facing impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m attaching an item from The Hill in which former Labor Secretary Robert Reich — an acknowledged political liberal — has lined out at least four impeachable offense already committed by the president.

Here it is.

Reich says that Trump’s accusation that Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower offices constitutes an impeachable offense, saying the president has recklessly accused his predecessor of committing a felony. He notes that the Constitution prohibits president from taking money from foreign governments; Trump, Reich alleges, has done so by “steering foreign delegations” to hotels he owns. Reich contends that Trump violates the First Amendment’s provision against establishing a state religion by banning travelers from Muslim countries into the United States. Reich also says the First Amendment bans any abridgment of a free press, but Trump has labeled the media the “enemy of the people.”

There’s a fifth potential cause, which Reich has asserted. It involves the possibility that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian government officials to swing the election in the president’s favor. Reich said such activity, if proven, constitutes “treason.”

Will any of this come to pass? I have no clue.

Think of the politics of it. Trump is a Republican; both congressional chambers are controlled by the GOP. Will the Republican House majority bring articles of impeachment to a vote, no matter how seriousness of whatever charges are considered?

The collusion matter strikes me as the most serious and the most likely to align Republicans along with Democrats in considering whether to impeach the president. I am not suggesting there is, indeed, proof of such collusion.

Remember as well that the GOP-led House managed to impeach a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, in 1998 on three counts relating to his seedy relationship with that White House intern. Conviction in the Senate, though, required a super majority of senators; the GOP fell far short on all three counts. Thus, the president was acquitted.

They based that impeachment on the president’s failure to tell the truth under oath to a federal grand jury that questioned him about the affair. He broke the law, Republicans said. There was your “impeachable offense,” they argued.

My major concern about the Clinton impeachment was whether the president’s offense had a direct impact on his office. It did not. Any of the issues that Secretary Reich lists, however, certainly do have a direct impact on the president’s ability to perform his duties.

The bar for whatever might occur with the current president is set even higher than it was for President Clinton, given that the president and the congressional majorities are of the same party.

You might not believe this, but I do not prefer an impeachment to occur. I do, though, want the unvarnished truth to be revealed about what the president thinks he can do with — and to — the exalted office he occupies.

If the truth is as ugly as some of us fear, then Congress should know how to repair the damage.

No pity for Preet Bharara

Preet Bharara doesn’t need any pity.

Indeed, he needs a hand-clap or two for standing up to the president of the United States.

Here’s what he did.

Bharara served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a post to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama. After the 2016 election, Donald J. Trump reportedly asked Bharara to stay on the job. The federal prosecutor agreed.

Trump took the oath of office, then in a stunning reversal, he sought the resignations of all Obama appointees who had stayed on after the former president had left office.

Bharara was one of them. He refused to quit. What did the president do? He fired him today.

This sequence speaks quite directly to the utter aimlessness of the new administration. The president says one thing, does another and then strikes out against those who try to hold him accountable for the statements he makes.

Bharara will land on his feet. He’s a first-rate lawyer. He’ll likely end up in private practice somewhere and will make a handsome living. Or, he might run for public office.

Or, he might go on a speaking tour, where he’ll also make a lot of money telling the nation about the caprice that the current president seems all too willing to demonstrate.

Oh, and it’s interesting too that the president hasn’t denied — via Twitter or any other medium — that he ever asked the prosecutor to stay on the job.