Tag Archives: Donald Trump

International news, national news, political news

By all means, subpoena those FBI records

You go, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham!

The South Carolina Republican has said that he is ready to demand records from the FBI for any warrant requests that would have been made to wiretap Donald John Trump’s offices in Trump Tower.

Graham, along with Rhode Island Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, have asked the FBI for any information regarding the outrageous claim that Trump made asserting that former President Obama wiretapped his offices.

One big problem exists regarding what Trump has alleged. He has offered not a shred of evidence to back up what he has said via Twitter. Nothing, man! No proof. No basis.

Graham and Whitehouse are as alarmed as millions of other Americans — such as yours truly — about what Trump has done. He has accused his predecessor as president of the United States of breaking the bleeping law!

It is that assertion for which Graham wants some documentation. Either the president can prove what he has alleged or he cannot. If he can prove his offices were bugged, then we have a scandal of major proportions. If he cannot prove it, well, then we have another scandal of major magnitude.

“We request that the Department of Justice provide us copies of any warrant applications and court orders — redacted as necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods that may be compromised by disclosure, and to protect any ongoing investigations — related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower,” Graham and Whitehouse wrote.

If the FBI doesn’t deliver the goods on request, Graham said he is ready to order those papers delivered to Capitol Hill.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Hey, what about Bannon and the NSC?

It’s almost impossible to keep up with all the stories that pass through the light of intense publicity only to disappear into the darkness … as it relates to Donald John Trump’s administration.

Remember the story about Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart.com executive, alleged white nationalist, political adviser becoming a member of the principals committee on the National Security Council?

Bannon is still on the NSC. He’s still getting the regular briefings, sitting in a chair that should be filled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and the director of national intelligence. Trump demoted those two military and intelligence leaders in favor of partisan political animals such as Bannon.

He’s a political hack who serves on one of the most ostensibly non-political bodies in our massive federal government.

Why is this guy still there? Why is the new national security adviser, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster sitting or standing still for this travesty?

Bannon doesn’t belong on the principals committee. He now serves as chief political adviser for the president. He fulfills an entirely different role, vastly separate from anything that the National Security Council does. The NSC’s role is to provide the president with keen, sharp and non-political analysis of national security threats. The national security adviser essentially is the chief administrative official of the NSC. From all that I’ve read and heard about Lt. Gen. McMaster, he appears to be a scholar with a superb military mind.

Bannon status as political hack in chief ought to disqualify him from such his posting as a member of the principals committee.

Yet this story stays hidden in the background.

What kind of advice does Bannon give the president when, say, a Middle East nation moves on another one? What kind of advice does he offer when North Korea lobs a missile into Seoul, South Korea? Or when Hamas starts firing ordnance from Gaza into neighborhoods in southern Israel?

Bannon offers no national security credibility. There he is, though. He’s perched among the other “principals” offering advice to the president of the United States.

This guy frightens the crap out of me.

International news

‘Uh, no,’ majority leader says to wall-payment idea

“Uh, no.”

Two words, four letters altogether. That’s all it seemed to take for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to put the kibosh on Donald Trump’s notion of getting another nation to pay for his “great, great wall” across our southern border.

Is that the end of it? Probably not.

McConnell’s terse response was to a question about whether Mexico would pay for the wall Trump wants to build. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has insisted vocally, categorically and with maximum emphasis that Mexico wouldn’t spend a peso to build the wall.

Here’s how NBCNews.com reported the senator’s response: “‘Do you believe that Mexico will pay for it [the border wall]?,’ Politico Playbook’s Jake Sherman asked. McConnell, R-Ky., flatly responded, ‘Uh, no.’

“McConnell said he believes that there are certain areas along the border that don’t need a border wall to secure the area.

“The border wall, which is estimated will cost $21.6 billion dollars to build, has spurred a lot of controversy in the United States and Mexico.”

A lot of controversy? Do you think?

The president of the United States might think he can get another sovereign country to do his bidding. Except that the term “sovereign” explains precisely why he cannot.

Imagine for just a moment the Canadians demanding the same thing of this country should a tide of “illegal immigrants” decide to flee the United States for points north.

Is that a preposterous notion? Hmmm. Not … entirely.

national news, political news

Here comes the dreaded ‘I-word’

The “I-word” has entered the discussion of Donald J. Trump’s troubles involving the Russians, his use of Twitter and a scathing accusation he has made against his predecessor as president of the United States.

One of the nation’s foremost constitutional scholars, law professor Laurence Tribe, believes the president’s reckless use of Twitter to accuse Barack Obama of tapping his phones might be grounds for impeachment.

There you have it, correct? Not exactly.

Tribe, I shall stipulate, is a liberal-leaning fellow who more than likely didn’t vote for Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

But he’s no dummy as it regards the U.S. Constitution and what it allows or disallows.

Tribe’s thesis simply is that the president’s use of a social medium constitutes a reckless disregard for due process and that it implies a certain unfitness for the office he occupies.

Readers of this blog no doubt know what Trump did. This past weekend, he awoke at his Mar-a-Lago estate early one morning and blasted out a tweet that accused former President Obama of “ordering” spooks to tap Trump’s offices at Trump Tower while looking for proof that Trump was colluding with the Russians to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Nasty stuff, right? You bet it is.

It’s also unproven. You see, Trump didn’t offer a shred of proof to back up that ridiculous contention. He has accused President Obama of committing a felony, given that the president cannot “order” a wiretap, which must come from a federal judge, who must have “probable cause” to issue such an order.

The rule of law doesn’t enter into Trump’s tendency to engage in these Twitter tantrums. He just fires this crap into cyberspace. Consequences? Who cares about ’em?

Meanwhile, Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress are demanding Trump provide some basis for this ridiculous assertion. None has been forthcoming.

Spoiler alert: I don’t think we’ll ever see any such basis.

In the meantime, the I-word is out there.

I agree that the bar for impeachment must be kept high. President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 was based on a sex scandal and his failure to adhere to his oath to be truthful to a federal grand jury that questioned him about it. I don’t believe those events met the standard for impeaching a president of the United States … but that’s just me.

This Trump story is far from being resolved. The president had better come up with something provable to back up his contention that President Obama broke the law.

Or else …

medical news

Politics can be so very brutal among conservatives

Politics is fickle, unfaithful and cruel.

Donald J. Trump scored big election victories in some of the nation’s most conservative congressional districts. And yet … many of those members of Congress representing those districts might be about to turn their guns on the president over his endorsement of what they call a “light” version of the Affordable Care Act.

The American Health Care Act has been put forward. The president is on board with the plan that offers tax credits for people seeking health insurance; it contains many of the features popular with the Affordable Care Act, which the AHCA is designed to replace.

Congress’s more conservative members, though, dislike it. They’re digging in. They’re fighting among themselves, not to mention with the president.

What to do? That’s the problem facing the master negotiator Donald John Trump as he tries to persuade the hard-core among his Republican brethren that the AHCA is worth approving and sending to his desk.

This is a tough sale to make with those among the GOP who just don’t want anything on the books that resembles — even in the slightest sense — something that was enacted at the behest of the former president, Barack Hussein Obama.

We’re likely now to see if the negotiator in chief is as good at this political game as he bragged about incessantly on his way to the White House.

national news

‘Sniveling Coward’ to break bread with ‘Lyin’ Ted’

Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that White House dining room tonight.

Donald J. Trump and first lady Melania Trump have invited Ted and Heidi Cruz over for dinner.

Oh … my.

Trump and Cruz once were bitter foes seeking the Republican Party presidential nomination that Trump eventually won. Along the way, well, you know … it became white-hot with hatred.

Trump called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” and then tweeted that unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz. There also was that lie Trump told about Cruz’s father being seen in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald, suggesting that the elder Cruz might have been complicit in President Kennedy’s assassination.

Then came the bombastic response from Cruz, who called Trump a “sniveling coward” over his crass treatment of Heidi Cruz and the rest of his family.

All is forgotten and forgiven tonight? Are they asking us to think that’s the case?

I would pay real American money to be able to watch how these two couples break the ice.

legal news

Get ready for hot seat, Mr. Deputy AG-designate

Rod Rosenstein.

That name, right there, well might become the most-watched in Washington, D.C., behind — quite naturally — the name of the president of the United States.

Rosenstein has been picked by Donald J. Trump to become the deputy U.S. attorney general.

Why is this fellow so important right now? Because his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has recused himself from anything to do with an investigation into whether Trump was too cozy with Russian government officials. That means Rosenstein, by all accounts a hard-nosed prosecutor, will get to decide whether to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump-Russia matter.

Rosenstein’s confirmation hearing focused almost exclusively on Sessions, Trump and the Russians. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats sought to pin him down, trying to get him to commit to picking a special prosecutor. Rosenstein didn’t give that one up — to no one’s surprise.

Unlike Senate and House Republicans who say it’s “too early” to determine whether there’s a need for a special counsel, I happen to believe one should get the call. There needs to be a thorough investigation of what the president knew about the Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election, when he knew it, whether he colluded with the Russians. We also need to know whether Trump or someone from his campaign staff sought to renegotiate sanctions leveled against Russia by the Obama administration over the Russians’ meddling in our electoral process.

Rosenstein isn’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill deputy AG. Folks in that job usually blend into the woodwork, never to be seen or heard from again once they take office.

Not this guy.

Assuming the Senate confirms him — and it should — Rosenstein is about to settle into one of the hottest seats in Washington.

Do the right thing, sir. Pick that special counsel.

national news, political news

Uh, Mr. President? Listen to Sen. McCain — for once!

John McCain has laid it on the line to the president of the United States.

If you’re going to make an explosive allegation against your predecessor, Mr. President, it is imperative that you tell Americans the “basis on which” you are making that allegation.

That’s what McCain has told Donald J. Trump to do.

Trump ignited a firestorm over the weekend when he rolled out of the sack at 6 in the morning and fired off a tweet that said President Barack Obama “ordered” a wiretap of Trump’s offices in New York.

No proof. No evidence. No attribution. Nothing accompanied the tweet. But the flames began burning out of control.

McCain says a simple tweet isn’t good enough.

To my ears, it sounds as though the Arizona Republican — and 2008 GOP presidential nominee — doesn’t exactly believe what Trump has asserted.

At issue, of course, is the reported relationship between Trump’s campaign and Russian government officials. Trump asserts that Obama had the phones bugged so he could eavesdrop on Trump’s campaign officials to learn whether there was a relationship with a foreign government during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump has accused Obama of breaking the law. He has essentially called his predecessor a felon. Presidents cannot order phones to be bugged. These things occur through a warrant issued by a federal judge at the behest of the Justice Department.

Sen. McCain is insisting that Donald Trump tell us the basis of his wild-ass allegation.

Well, Mr. President? What is it? Talk to us. You are the president of the United States of America. You owe us — your bosses — a complete and thorough explanation.

national news, political news

Sanders is right: Trump is a liar

Bernie Sanders is correct: The president of the United States is a liar. He might even be a pathological liar.

He has lied continually. He does it on purpose, which defines someone who lies.

Donald J. Trump needs to produce evidence to back up his latest lie, which is that “it is a fact” that Barack Obama ordered the wiretap of the president’s offices in Trump Tower.

He hasn’t done so. He didn’t produce any evidence of his previous lies. Not the Muslims cheering the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11; or that Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in President Kennedy’s assassination; or the millions of illegal immigrants voting for Hillary Clinton.

He has lied every time he has said those things.

To “lie” is to willingly, knowingly tell a falsehood.

That’s what Sen. Sanders, I-Vt., has said. He stands by his statement. He is right. Trump is a liar.

And this is the guy who got elected president of the United States of America?

Spare me, please, the rejoinder that “all politicians lie.” Trump’s troops kept telling us that their guy “tells it like it is.” That’s different, presumably, from pure lies.

And also you may spare me the red herring that Bill Clinton “lied” about his affair with the intern, which got him impeached by the House of Representatives. I know that he lied under oath to the grand jury; I also know that was the ostensible reason for his impeachment. He paid his dues for lying.

Trump, though, hasn’t paid anything for these lies he has told. He got elected even as he lied his way all along the campaign trail.

He is lying now by suggesting that Barack Obama ordered the wiretaps.

And for that reason, Bernie Sanders should stand his ground.

International news

Trump’s new travel ban: better, but still not worthy

I’ll hand it to Donald J. Trump.

At least he can tinker around the edges of a bad policy to make it somewhat more palatable, even if the very principle behind it stinks.

I refer to the revised travel ban he introduced to the world Monday.

He took Iraq off the list of Muslim-majority nations where refugees are banned from entering the United States; he exempts those with current visas from the list; it removes language that grants exemptions for “religious minorities” in the Middle East; it won’t take effect until March 16.

Is this one better than the old policy that was shot down by a federal judge, whose opinion was upheld by a federal appeals court? Yes.

It remains problematic for those of us who just dislike the idea of singling out countries and people who adhere to certain religious faiths from this brand of “profiling.”

The reaction to this revised rule has been far less vocal than the outburst that greeted the initial rule, which the president signed into law via executive order one week after taking office. Accordingly, it’s interesting, too, that Trump signed this executive order in private; no cameras, no ceremony, no hoopla, hype or hysteria.

“This is definitely on much firmer legal ground,” according to a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security. “It’s pretty narrowly applied to new visa applicants, which is probably the place where the president has the most authority.”

Time will tell — probably very soon — whether this one will stand up to court challenges. My guess is that it will, although if I were king of the world I would prefer that the president simply instruct immigration, customs and border security troops to be hyper-vigilant when checking everyone who seeks to come here.